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THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 



THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



OR 



(Seologg for $iMe j5fobarfs. 



BY 

S. R. PATTISON, F. G. S. 



For now he is no philosopher who will not attempt to make a new philosophical world 
and produce his module thereof."— Db Gotte on Genesis, 1670. 









PHILADELPHIA: 

LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 

NEW YORK: STANFORD & DELISSER. 

1858. 



$5 m 
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Mk«%t*ue 



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£ PREFACE 



This is not another attempt to construct a scheme 
of reconciliation which shall satisfy all parties, nor a new 
theory of interpretation either of the earth or the Word 
of God ; but an endeavour to consider both records 
together with equal reverence as being of equal authority. 

Undoubtedly the minds of many good men are uneasy 
at the suspicion of a conflict between the testimonies, just 
as on the eve of an important trial the young advocate is 
distressed by the prospect of contrary evidence equally 
credible. But in both cases the open examination re- 
moves, one by one, all the apparent discrepancies, and 
truth comes out all the more illustrious for the clouds 
which beset its course. 

I have not adverted (except in the bibliographical 
chapter) to many of the exceedingly able books which 
have been written on this subject. It were an ungra- 
cious task to refute the geological errors of the one party, 



Vlll PREFACE. 

or to rebuke the theological indifference of the other. 
The best remedy — as in all analogous cases — is the simple 
exhibition of the truth, both physical and moral. This 
has been my aim. 

"The head and front of my offending 
Hath this extent, no more." 

It is difficult, and would be undesirable, to do this without 
kindling into some measures of enthusiasm as the proofs 
of the Divine Goodness accumulate on the march. We 
do not trace the biography of a benefactor with the same 
coldness as the history of a tyrant. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 
The Beginning. — Creation 9 

CHAPTER II. 
The Arrangement. — Geology 16 

CHAPTER III. 

The Continuance. — Paleontology . . . .29 

CHAPTER IV. 
The History 63 

CHAPTER V. 
The Exposition 82 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Exposition continued 99 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Geology of Scripture Lands . . . .111 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Bibliography 122 



t 



THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE BEGINNING. — COSMOGONY. 

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 

From some eminence, ascended in the course of 
our autumnal ramble, we see the green earth spread 
out before us as a map. Its aspect, colour, composi- 
tion, and arrangement suggest design; we ask, was 
it made for us? — by whom? — and when? Memory 
brings to our recollection the offerings made by 
"mother earth" to our material well-being, and we 
readily conclude, that the requirements of man had 
something to do with its origin and plan. 

The shrewdest observers and most profound 
thinkers in all ages, who have investigated the con- 
dition of the earth, have arrived at the universal 
conclusion, that "The hand that made it is divine." 
2 ' 



10 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

From deepest mines and loftiest mountains, from 
primeval rocks and alluvial plains, from liquid ocean 
and ambient air, the testimony springs up, "In the 
beginning Grod made the heavens and the earth." 

And, indeed, during the last half-century, the 
wits of philosophers were greatly exercised on the 
demonstrations of the attributes of God to be dis- 
covered in the existing state of things. The kind 
and amount of proof of which the subject is capable, 
still occasion honourable and useful mental labour. 
We can, however, afford to be independent of all 
such attempts in regard to the foundation fact it- 
self, for we derive it from the primal divine an- 
nouncement to man, in the book which is the only 
record of "The true sayings of God." In all lan- 
guages God is owned as creator. The various schools 
of Grecian philosophy adopted rival theories con- 
cerning the mode in which things subsisted, but on 
the divine origin of the things themselves all were 
agreed. The wearisome efforts of the ancient meta- 
physicians to invent a consistent hypothesis con- 
cerning the method and order of creation, a task so 
superhuman and so useless, is very affecting as an 
exhibition of the want of true wisdom. It evinces 
our proneness to neglect the useful and hopeful for 
the vain prosecution of the useless and hopeless. 

Nor is the argument arising from a cosmical sur- 
vey of the whole creation weakened, if we confine 
our view to any of the great divisions into which 
science separates the visible universe ; nor if we 



THE BEGINNING — COSMOGONY. 11 

further separate any of the orderly subdivisions 
from the still vast and various group of general 
phenomena. Taking geology, the science of the 
earth, as an illustration, we have only to open its 
literature to find that it abounds in lofty demonstra- 
tions of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, 
which have embarrassed only by their opulence all 
who have written on the subject. 

So if we descend to the consideration of a single 
class of strata connected by some common simi- 
larity, such as the oolite or the carboniferous, the 
same great argument presses us on every side, ren- 
dering it quite easy to write as many treatises of 
natural theology as there are layers of substance in 
the earth, and that without the least infringement 
on their mutual independence of each other. A few 
brief references to ordinary knowledge will serve to 
show this. We have — 

1. The present surface with its varied composi- 
tion, adapted for vegetable productions requiring 
corresponding differences of soil, water, and drain- 
age. 

2. The remains of former successive land sur- 
faces constituting the inexhaustible virgin forest 
soils of the world. 

3. The remains of former surfaces, when animal 
life somewhat differed from the present. The drift 
period, which has so usefully mixed and enriched 
the soils of a large portion of the world. 

4. The tertiary beds, presenting us in and around 



12 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

London with gravel for roads, brick earth for our 
buildings ; elsewhere with clays and sands for pot- 
tery, earths for cement; in the Isle of Wight and 
around Paris, stone for stately houses; in Suffolk 
with phosphates for manure. The lower sands serve 
as a storehouse for the water falling on the whole 
area, which sinks through this great natural filter, 
and gushes forth along its edges to supply the po- 
pulation above. Most of the capital cities of west- 
ern Europe stand on tertiary formations, and thus 
prove the adaptation of their contents to the com- 
plex necessities of a high civilization. 

5. The chalk furnishes an unlimited supply of 
carbonate of lime, a substance absolutely indispen- 
sable to man in his social condition on the earth. 
The sands at the base of the chalk also serve as 
vast water-bearing strata, to purify and carry up 
living streams. 

6. The oolite deposits, whether occurring in the 
sunny knolls of Somersetshire, the cliffs of Port- 
land, the flanks of the Jura mountains, or in the 
crests of Lebanon, display a vast series of useful 
rocks, exactly adapted for building the structures 
which individual and public life require. Amidst 
the verdant vales of Gloucestershire, listen to the 
sound of the stone-cutter on the hill-side, and ad- 
mire the great amount of industry called forth by a 
production so common as freestone. 

7. The new red sandstone reminds us of marvel- 
lous treasures, in deep lakes of brine, or mines of 



THE BEGINNING — COSMOGONY. 13 

salt, which for ages have been yielding their indis- 
pensable supplies to the universal wants of man. 

8. The coal measures may be traced, not by the 
greenness of their vegetation, nor the beauty of 
their cornfields, but by the hum of a teeming popu- 
lation employed in extracting and using the bound- 
less stores of the mineral fuel, iron, and limestone, 
which render this one group of rocks an abounding 
and abiding demonstration of the goodness of God. 

9. The old slaty rocks, the Devonian, Silurian, 
and Cambrian, glitter with mineral wealth. Our 
roofs are covered with the leaves of rock v thin and 
durable as metal ; our trades are supplied with the 
produce of the mineral veins cleft in these ancient 
masses. 

10. The crystalline and metamorphosed rocks 
bear for us the wear and tear of the world's traffic 
in our streets, and form monuments which seem to 
connect ages together. The obvious effects of these 
crystalline rocks in the development and concentra- 
tion of the diffused mineral wealth of the slate beds 
amongst which they have been intruded, are notable 
proofs of their value. 

As we have thus rapidly travelled downwards 
through the series of strata which underlie each 
other, we have omitted all mention of two branches 
of our inquiry: the first relating to the intimate 
forms of things, from which it could be shown that 
the very particles of the rocks do testify to a cre- 
ator; the second relating to the proofs of Deity 

9* 



14 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

manifested by the remains of former life-bearing 
structures, called organic fossils, which are to be 
found in all the rocks we have mentioned save those 
of the last group. 

The science of these old forms, or Palaeontology, 
is altogether a modern region, obtained by the skill 
and patience of recent investigators from the great 
ocean of the unknown. No sooner did it become 
terra ftrma, than the Epicurean came to inquire 
whether it would testify to the existence of an un- 
knoivn God; the Stoic to find whether its departing 
mists would conceal the present deity; but the 
Christian philosopher, with firm step and thankful 
heart, has taken possession of the country in the 
name of Him of whom all its productions testify ; 
never again can it become debatable land. Men of 
scientific distinction in various countries have vied 
with each other in stating the great argument for 
God founded on the structure of organized fossils ; 
so that in the vast orchestra of a jubilant universe 
"dungeons and all deeps" do join the chorus and 
show forth His praise. 

Sometimes when alone in the abandoned quarry, 
remote from the haunts of men, the stone, yielding 
to repeated blows, discloses some rare form of an- 
tique life, with traces of pearly lustre still owning 
and reflecting the sunlight; the devout geologist is 
overcome by the thought of the ages which have 
elapsed since it was seen by any eye save that of 
the Omniscient. Perhaps, in the pride of its lifetime? 



THE BEGINNING — COSMOGONY. 15 

some angel mind glowed into admiration at its open- 
ing beauties, ere the curtain fell which has concealed 
it for ages. It has a history, and its disentombment 
shall be like the recovery of Pompeian viols; again 
it shall contribute to the praises of the universe as it 
powerfully pronounces the world-deep truth that " in 
the beginning" God was its Creator. 

"A loud hosanna sent from all thy works, 
Which he that hears it with a shout repeats, 
And adds his rapture to the general praise." 



18 THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ARRANGEMENT. 

" Consider the wondrous works of God. Dost thou know 
when God disposed them?" — Job xxxvii. 15. 

A person unacquainted with the scripture history 
of mankind would not have expected to find the 
arrangement of the earth's mineral masses such as 
it actually is. 

It is not the best possible in the abstract, but the 
best possible in the present moral condition of the 
human family. A conclave of sages constructing 
an Utopian globe for an Utopian people, would have 
allotted to every portion a quantity of mineral 
riches adequate for its requirements, placed so as 
to be available for its use. Every man would have 
found himself within easy reach of all that he 
needed. 

But the all-wise God, having regard to the moral 
ruin of man's nature, in devising methods for its 
recovery, ordered a state of things the very oppo- 
site to all this. 

All rocks are either — 1. Eruptive, thrown out 
from the interior of the earth in a tenacious state. 
2. Sedimentary, deposited from fluid. 3. Conglo- 
merate, made up of the torn fragments of other 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 17 

rocks. Or, 4. Metamorphic, that is, altered by the 
vicinity of eruptive rock. 

All these are to some extent formed under our 
observation at present. We see volcanoes adding 
lavas or pumice to the mountains whence they 
issue; mud banks becoming gradually consolidated; 
fragments of the winter floods becoming cemented 
into stone; loose sand or clay in the neighbourhood 
of lava-streams becoming hard rock. But our mo- 
dern instances are feeble exhibitions compared with 
those of the ancient world. 

The mineral constituents are irregularly and 
unequally distributed; the metallic treasures hidden 
deep in the clefts of the solid rocks, attainable only 
in limited quantities, by much labour and skill. 
The result of this arrangement is to bring man 
everywhere, as a condition of his well-being, under 
a necessity to exercise intelligence, industry, art, 
and perseverance. 

The general disposition is in beds or layers, in- 
terrupted by unconformable masses, by which the 
beds have been broken through and raised up sub- 
sequently to their deposition. 

The lines of any of our English railways will 
serve to show this. On the Great Western, for in- 
stance, we shall find a change of strata nearly at 
every station, thus: — 

Paddington, . . . Superficial gravels. 

"West Drayton, . . London clay. 

Reading, . . . Plastic sands. 



18 



THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



Pangbourne, . 

Goring, 

Wallingford road, 

Didcot, 

Farringdon road, 

Steventon 

Shrivenham, . 

Swindon, 

Wootton Basset, 

Chippenham, . 

Corsham, 

Box Tunnel, . 

Box, . 

Bath, . 

Keynsham, 

Bristol, 

Nailsea, 

Taunton, 

Wellington, 

Exeter, 

Newton Abbot, 

Totness, 

Plymouth, 

Liskeard, 

St. Austell, 



. Upper chalk. 

. Middle chalk. 

. Lower chalk. 

. Upper greensand. 
Lower greensand. 

. Gault clay. 

. Portland oolite. 

. Kimmeridge oolite. 

. Coral oolite. 

. Cornbrash oolite. 

. Middle oolite. 

. Great oolite. 

. Lower oolite. 

. Upper lias. 

. Lower lias. 

. New red sandstone. 

. Coal. 

. New red sandstone (again.) 

. Devonian rocks. 

. New red sandstone (again.) 

. Mountain limestone. 

. Devonian rocks (again.) 

. Upper Devonian. 

. Lower Devonian. 

. Granite. 

The changes would be found still more numerous 
if noted minutely along the line. 

Leaving out the repetitions, the whole of this is 
a descending series; that is, every successive forma- 
tion, in our downward journey towards the Land's 
End, crops out from beneath the preceding one. 
This has no connexion with the absolute height of 
the hills; for we shall find the granite and slate 
much more mountainous than the uppermost gravels 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 19 

at Hampstead. Nor is it a singular instance; for, 
-wherever elsewhere we discover any two of the for- 
mations which we encountered in our Western jour- 
ney, we shall find them occupying the same relative 
position to each other. We shall not find all the 
terms of the series in every place ; but wherever we 
do find them, the order of succession is the same. 

If we add to this the consideration of the easily 
observed fact, that each of these layers is charac- 
terized by a different set of monuments of former 
life, a different collection of organic remains, we 
shall be prepared to accept the statements of care- 
ful observers who have carried on over the world at 
large a similar course of investigation to that which 
we have pursued on the railway. 

The result of extensive and careful observation 
has shown that the following succession of strata 
obtains as a general rule, and prevails, without ex- 
ception, in respect of order, over the globe, whether 
the members of the succession at any given place 
may be many or few. 

I. POST-TERTIARY. 
Recent. — Peat and alluvium with human remains and works 
of art. Deposits with fossil shells of recent species, but with- 
out any human remains or works. 

II. TERTIARY. 

1. Pliocene. 

Newer Pliocene : — 

Drift, gravel, and boulder clay; Norwich Crag and ca- 
vern remains, with elephant bones and shells, nearly 
all recent, divisible into three or four distinct periods. 



20 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

Older Pliocene : — 

Marine coralline crag of Suffolk. 

2. Miocene. 

Upper Miocene : — 

Touraine strata, land and sea. 
Lower Miocene : — 

Hempstead beds in the Isle of Wight. 

3. Eocene. 

Upper Eocene: — 

Bembridge and other freshwater limestones in the Isle 
of Wight, and at Montmartre. 
Middle Eocene: — 

Bagshot sand. Calcaire grossiere. 

Nummulitic strata. 
Lower Eocene : — 

London clay. 

Woolwich sands. 

Thanet sands. 

III. SECONDARY. 

Cretaceous. 

1. Maestricht chalk. 

2. Upper white chalk with flints. 

3. Lower chalk without flints. 

4. Upper greensand. Firestone. 

5. Gault clay. Whetstones. 

6. Coloured sands and rough stone. 

7. Weald clay. 

8. Hastings sand. 

Oolites. 

9. Purbeck stone, ^ 

10. Portland stone, > Upper Oolite. 

11. Kimmeridge clay, J 

12. Coral rag, ) 

13. Oxford clay, \ Middle Oolite - 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 21 

14. Bath stone, ^ 



15. Fuller's earth, > Lower Oolite. 

16. Inferior oolite, J 

17. Lias: — 

Upper lias. 
Marlstone. 
Lower lias. 

18. Salt-bearing rocks of Cheshire, "\ 

19. Muschelkalk of Germany, > New red sandstone. 

20. Lower sandstones, J 

IV. PALEOZOIC. 

1. Magnesian Limestone, 

2. Coal Measures. 

Upper Coal : — 

Millstone grit. 
Lower Coal: — 

Mountain limestone. 

Carboniferous slate. 

3. Devonian. 

Upper Devonian: — 

Plymouth. 
Lower Devonian: — 

North Devon and Caithness. 

4. Silurian. 

Upper Silurian: — 

Ludlow. 

Wenlock. 

Caradoc. 
Lower Silurian: — 

Llandeilo and Bala. 

5. Cambrian. 

Lingula flags. 
Primordial zone. 

Reference to Sir Charles Lyell's recent edition 
3 



22 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

of his valuable Manual * will show that upwards of 
130 formations of rock, clay, or sand, have been 
well ascertained; each having a constant position 
in relation to every other, each characterized by a 
distinct collection of fossil organic remains. 

Nor does the wonder end here ; for if we examine 
any of the formations dismissed in a single line in 
our table, we shall find that each contains proofs of 
succession within itself, disclosing a history of its 
own, on which a volume might be written. 

The report of the government surveyors on the 
Isle of Wight shows that the same kind of evidence 
which enables us to separate the London clay from 
the chalk, also proves that in one formation — the 
upper eocene, at White Cliff Bay — there are fifty- 
five distinct layers or beds, which must have been 
all deposited horizontally, each forming for some 
time a sea floor or land surface, all raised and low- 
ered from the water level at least as many times, 
and ultimately raised in curves forming the present 
shore. 

Any memoir on a single formation, any full de- 
scriptive geology of a limited district will serve to 
show the same fact. So vast and various are the 
phenomena, that every successive stratum has now 
a literature of its own — its own peculiar natural 
history, its flora, its fauna, its topography and phy- 
sical geography. 

To these considerations we must add that of the 

* Supplement, 5th edit., 1857. 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 23 

crystalline and volcanic rocks — granite and its asso- 
ciates, basalt and lava. Upwards of forty distinct 
varieties of these are known. The only order of 
succession that can be established is derived from 
observing the surface over which they flowed : whe- 
ther they have ravaged and rifted the present green 
earth in the shape of modern lava flows ; or, as in 
Central France, have mingled with the early ter- 
tiaries ; or, as in Greece, with the cretaceous beds ; 
or, as in South Devon, with the new red sandstones ; 
or, as in Fifeshire, with the coal; or in Cornwall, 
with the Devonians; or in Wales, with the Cam- 
brians. 

The older bursts and flows of molten matter were 
principally granite and greenstone. Their modern 
successors are lava and pumice. Beds of volcanic 
ash are common to both periods. The exhibition of 
these effects before the close of the tertiary period 
is incomparably more extensive than since. 

The influence of these crystalline rocks on the 
sedimentary beds has been so strange and powerful, 
that it was long ere even scientific observers were 
bold enough to give the real interpretation. 

In the Alps, for instance, we may trace the lime- 
stone and marls of the secondary rocks from their 
position in advance of the mountains, with all their 
usual characteristic fossils, until we find them in 
contact with the granite axis of the chain. They 
then become actually converted into solid masses of 
semi-crystalline rocks. Fossils gradually harden, 



24 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

and their outlines disappear under the influences of 
the severe physical forces brought into play. The 
shale, clays, and limestones become metamorphosed; 
the very substances which at one end of our explo- 
rations lie as they were left by primeval waters, be- 
come at the other end strong mountain masses of 
mica slate and adamantine rock. Such is the his- 
tory of some of the most beautiful statuary mar- 
bles ; the Parian and Carrara are merely hardened 
chalk marls. We thus discover that the chemical 
laws of affinity, like the organic laws of life, have 
been the same from the first; we are led into ano- 
ther vast field of preparation for the present, far 
back in the vista of the past. 

We are now treating of the mere juxtaposition of 
these mineral masses, affirming that they are placed 
in the best possible manner for the development and 
exercise of man's powers in obtaining the supply of 
his wants. 

In order to maintain superiority in manufacture, 
it is necessary that the raw material should super- 
abound in some locality, so as to render it there an 
object of attention in preference to other things. 
This is just the method manifested in the allotment 
of minerals on the earth. 

There are slender beds of coal in the Devonian, 
considerable accumulations in some parts of the 
oolites, much of lignite among the tertiaries, but the 
main bulk of the coal deposits throughout the world 
occur in one group alone, always occupying the 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 25 

same relative position, and emphatically called the 
coal measures. This determines the industrial ope- 
rations of a district, provides for the division of la- 
bour on a grand scale, and, by the special educa- 
tion of some, promotes the social welfare of the 
whole. 

In like manner is it with the metals. Indications 
of these are scattered through all strata, especially 
the more ancient, and those which have been most 
disturbed by igneous rocks ; but they exist in suffi- 
cient quantities for commercial purposes only in the 
older slate rocks, and near or in granite, with the 
exception of iron, which, like the cereal plants, 
being of more general use, is also of the widest range. 

So the salt impregnating the brine springs of 
Cheshire would be lost if diffused amongst the mass 
of strata above and below it; but, by being stored 
between the layers of the trias, in beds of ninety 
feet thick, it furnishes a supply in the mode best 
adapted to call forth the art and industry of man. 

The present actual arrangement has not been 
effected by the continuance of tranquil processes 
alone. The earth shows traces, in its rocky re- 
cords, of many periods during which its surface was 
the theatre of physical disturbance and revolution 
of the mightiest character. 

Notwithstanding all the ability displayed by 
writers seeking to show that all visible effects may 
have been produced by causes now in operation, 
working at their present average intensity, it must 

3* 



26 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

be acknowledged that the phenomena of the past do 
vastly outweigh the powers of the present. We 
must conclude, from the inclined and contorted 
strata, the broken and upturned mountain chains, 
the sweeping drift currents, the displacement of ex- 
tensive areas, the shattering and reconstruction of 
enormous rock masses, and other similar events, 
quite ordinary in the early history of the world, — 
that in pre-historic times the display of physical 
forces was inconceivably vast, various, and intense. 

We are now well able to judge of this, for not 
only has the enterprise of man explored the surface 
of the earth and made its phenomena familiar to 
us, but the depths of the sea have been plumbed, 
and its hidden things brought to light. The sound- 
ings made for the Atlantic Telegraph show depres- 
sions deeper than the Himalayas, a channel of a 
mile and a half deep, a thousand miles long, scooped 
out by the Gulf Stream, the slow accumulation of 
delicate life-forms in the tranquil depths of ocean, 
and many effects which remind us of the rocks above. 
But the vastness of the forces acting on the latter 
still remains an unparalleled fact; and we therefore 
conclude, that though the laws of force were ever 
the same, the agencies were more active and potent. 

In reviewing the arrangement, we are struck with 
the one property which belongs to all the varieties 
of material, namely utility to man. As civilization 
advances, one and another instance of this is dis- 
covered, and brought into practical demand in the 



THE ARRANGEMENT. 27 

common life of the world's population. We daily 
avail ourselves, in a thousand ways, of the vast 
stores of mineral matter laid up and prepared for 
this end amidst the slow processes of anterior time. 

The earth is physically an inexhaustible treasury 
of things new and old; morally, it is a temple, 
wherein the worshippers of every successive age 
are never without new materials for perpetual in- 
cense. 

"And surely as time advances, and new and 
more profound adaptations of nature rise to view, as 
man comes to find that his race has been living for 
ages in the midst of complicated adaptations of 
which they were unconscious, and which could be 
developed only as the result of a long series of prior 
discoveries, but all tending to his well-being, his re- 
cognition of the Creative wisdom and greatness will 
become more vivid and grateful, and the earth be- 
come more sacred in his eyes."* When we step 
across the threshold of a villa buried for ages under 
the ashes of Vesuvius, we are amidst the well-known 
relics of ordinary human life ; so, on entering the 
caverns of the earth, we find them filled with the 
furniture of their former inhabitants. In the one 
case we trace with admiration the handiwork of the 
old Roman artist; in the other, the finger of God 
is manifest in the infinite skill and benevolence ex- 
hibited in these buried organizations. But if amidst 
the ruins of the former we should discover some 

* Harris's Pre- Adamite Earth, p. 338. 



28 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

work executed with the lofty purpose of benefiting 
distant posterity, then gratitude would augment our 
admiration at the display of so much goodness and 
skill. Such a claim has geology on our regard, for 
it tells us, in language that cannot be otherwise in- 
terpreted, of the Divine care and provision exhibited 
for man long before he arrived to take possession. 

And may not the devout Christian herein find 
some instructive analogy, on the floor of this lower 
earth, to the still greater process of preparation now 
in progress for a higher life beyond, as he thinks 
on our Saviour's promise? — "In my Father's house 
are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for 
you." * 

* St. John xiv. 2. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 29 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 

"Upholding all things by the word of his power." — Heb. i. 3. 

The Bible every where assumes not only the fact 
that God is the creator of the universe, but also that 
he gives it his continual presence and potency in all 
its processes and places. When the prophet Amos 
is denouncing divine judgments against the wicked, 
he declares the absolute certainty of their execu- 
tion, (in spite of superhuman efforts for escape,) 
grounded on the omnipresence and active omnipo- 
tence of God. " Though they dig into hell, thence 
shall mine hand take them; though they climb up 
to heaven, thence will I bring them down: and 
though they hide themselves in the top of Oarmel, 
I will search and take them out thence ; and though 
they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, 
thence will I command the serpent, and he shall 
bite them : and though they go into captivity before 
their enemies, thence will I command the sword, 
and it shall slay them : and I will set mine eyes 
upon them for evil and not for good. And the 
Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and 
it shall melt, and all that dwelleth therein shall 
mourn; and it shall rise up wholly like a flood, and 
shall be drowned as by the flood of Egypt. It is 



30 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

he that buildeth his stories in the heavens, and hath 
founded his troop in the earth ; he hath called for 
the waters of the sea, and poured them out upon 
the face of the earth; the Lord is his name."* 

The figures imply the incessant present agency of 
God, as well as his absolute supremacy. 

The mineral world bears the same testimony. 
The old hills have, from the beginning, been sub- 
jected to processes varying in direction and inten- 
sity; all substances, including the densest and 
toughest, have been made plastic for the construc- 
tion of the present temple of creation. 

The realms of past life show forth the same truth, 
in the numberless provisions made for sustenance 
during the ages long ago, as well as the various 
modes of supply; all with differing operations bend- 
ing to the accomplishment of the one great end. 
The notion of an intelligent first cause only will not 
solve the phenomena ; to do this requires the idea of 
a continual active causation, raising in our minds the 
conviction of a God who "everywhere hath sway," 
and by whom u are all things." 

In a large sense, the present state of things is a 
period of repose. We see no new continents 
emerging under our eyes, no new phase of organic 
life arising before our vision. But on inspection, 
we find that this general repose of the whole covers 
incessant action in every part. No river bed is 
stable, no sea-margin the same for two days together ; 

* Amos ix. 2 — 6. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 31 

every valley, every delta, every rock, every moun- 
tain, undergoes some amount of daily displacement 
and change. In some parts of the world, volcanic 
forces still effect obvious changes in the contour of 
the surface. So also in organic life, we have the 
same plants and animals that were known to our 
forefathers; the pictured mummy-cases of Egypt, 
the sculptures of Nineveh, the writings of ancient 
men, all prove that external nature, as a whole, has 
remained the same during the entire historical pe- 
riod; but this has been accompanied by frequent 
local changes in the proportion of species at all 
places. 

These variations are all within limits not defina- 
ble, but practically consistent with the general sta- 
bility of the whole, from age to age. No historical 
instance is known to us of a whole nation losing its 
country by geological convulsion. The phenomena 
of mutation, though occasionally scaring the world 
into thoughtfulness, do not practically set at naught 
the business either of national or individual life. 
" All things continue as they were ;" the great trans- 
forming energies are under still greater moral con- 
trol. Since the commencement of the historical era, 
we learn alike from sacred and profane history and 
from geology, that the apparently disturbing events 
have been few and far between ; whilst w T e are taught 
by the pre-historic ages, that periods of tranquil 
life-progress were then often succeeded by intermis- 
sions of turbulent action and volcanic energy. We 



32 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

will for the present assume that organic remains do 
stamp the age and relative position of the rock 
masses, independently of their mineral constitution 
or geographical position. This leading fact, on 
which so much of science is now based, will suffi- 
ciently become apparent in the course of our inves- 
tigations. " The fossiliferous strata present us with 
the entombed floras and faunas of bygone millen- 
niums. We ascend in time, whilst, penetrating 
downwards from layer to layer, we determine the 
relations in space of the several formations. An 
animal and vegetable existence that has passed away 
is brought to light ; wide-spread revolutions of the 
globe, the upheaval of mighty mountain chains, 
whose relative ages we are in a condition to deter- 
mine, denote the destruction of old organic forms — 
the appearance of new. A few of the older still 
show themselves for a time among the newer forms."* 
A rapid view of these realms will best unfold the 
fact of the Creator's presence all through the ages. 
There lies buried within the rocks the counterpart 
of the beautiful life now adorning the surface; not 
identical in form, but quite identical in the testi- 
mony which it yields to its Maker. 

In the British islands alone, according to the care- 
ful elaborate catalogue of Professor Morris, f there 
were discovered, up to 1854, the following number 
of species of organic fossils : — 

* Humboldt's Kosmos, vol. i. p. 288. 

t A Catalogue of British Fossils, Second Edit., 1854. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALAEONTOLOGY. 



33 





No. of 


Of "which 




Species. 


marked 


Plants, 




recent. 


613 





Diatornaceae, 








68 


1 


Amorphozoa, 








142 





Foraminifera, 








225 


34 


Zoophyta, 








456 





Echinodermata, 








497 


1 


Annelida, 








134 


3 


Cirrhipedia, . 








44 


9 


Crustacea ; 








303 


9 


Insecta, 








68 





Bryozoa, 








265 


6 


Brachiopoda, 








663 


2 


Rudistes, 








1 





Monomyaria, 








592 


11 


Dimyaria, 








1300 


40 


Pteropoda, . 








13 





Gasteropoda, 








1577 





Cephalopoda, 








684 





Pisces, . 








749 





Reptilia, 








181 





Aves, . 








11 





Mammalia,* . 








97 






There are 15,055 species of organic fossils now ac- 
tually classified in the Museum at Jermyn Street. 
Let these statements be pondered well, before pro- 
ceeding farther; there have been found within the 
area of these islands upwards of fifteen thousand 
species of once living things, every one differing 
specifically from those of the present creation. 

Agassiz states that, with the exception of one 
small fossil fish, discovered in the claystones of 

* We have added from the discoveries of Mr. Beckles in the 
Purbeck beds; vide Geol. Journ., 1857. 

4 



34 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

Greenland, he has not found any creature of this 
class, in all the geological strata, identical with any 
fish now living. 

Let it also be borne in mind, that we are not now 
speaking of individuals, but of races. We have co- 
ral reefs, with gemmules springing from the parent 
zoophyte; shells, with myriads in all stages of 
growth around them; crustaceans, with shoals of 
young; elephants, with milk teeth only; and plants 
of all growths. Other parts of the world are equally 
rich with our own much explored country. Large 
volumes are filled with the Palaeontology of France, 
of Germany, of Bohemia, of India, of the separate 
states of North America, and other countries. The 
zoology and botany of one country differs from that 
of another, and although there is considerable uni- 
formity in marine life, and many species have a re- 
markably wide geographical range in the same for- 
mation, yet it is now established that, during all 
periods of the past, the earth has been adorned with 
variety as well as with beauty; and that every plat- 
form of land has had its distinct botanical and zoo- 
logical provinces. 

Inasmuch as the lowest strata were most assu- 
redly deposited first, and as the lowest are those 
which would be so were the inclined strata again 
brought into a horizontal position, the distribution 
of these fossils constitutes the main interest of geo- 
logical science, considered as one of history. In 
our proposed visit to the catacombs of the old world 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 35 

we will explore from the surface downwards, pausing 
only at the well-marked stages of descent. 

I. Post-Tertiarf. 

1. Recent. — 'The layer of material now in course 
of formation is emphatically the dust of the earth. 
It has the unique distinction of being the burial- 
place of man, and is to be the theatre of the mira- 
cle of the resurrection. The fossils associated with 
the works of man only vary from their living suc- 
cessors to the same extent as is now shown by the 
distribution of life in any one locality in successive 
years. The annual visitor to the coast will recol- 
lect that the small sandy bay of one season becomes 
the pebble beach of another; the attractive strand 
where, as children say, there is "good shelling," is 
frequently found to have changed its locality alto- 
gether. The shifting of the shell sand, or sea weed, 
on the coast, frequently affects the annual value of 
the adjacent cliff farms. For a series of years ma- 
nure is freely thrown up by every tide ; another 
term may run on and the farmer have to send many 
miles for the same substances, owing to the shifting 
of the currents, probably in consequence of an al- 
teration in the contour of the ocean bed. The va- 
riations caused by man, in the zoology and botany 
of the district wherein he acts and becomes civilized, 
are well known to every sportsman and antiquarian. 
A good example of these changes is frequently af- 
forded by drainage works. On partially draining, 



36 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

in 1856, a small lake near Morsedorf, (Canton of 
Berne,) an area of about seventy feet in length and 
fifty feet broad, along the bank of the lower extre- 
mity of this lake, was found to be paved more or 
less closely with posts of oak, aspen, birch, and elm, 
driven through two beds of peat, three or four feet 
thick, of exclusively vegetable origin in its upper 
part, including many relics of human industry and 
art in its lower portion. Dr. Uhlmann collected 
nearly a thousand specimens, viz. : fragments of pot- 
tery, stone chisels, stone arrow-heads, pieces of cat 
bones, and perforated bear teeth, without any trace 
of metallic objects. The lower ends of the posts have 
evidently been also worked into their pointed shape 
by the means of stone tools. The upper portion of 
the bed containing these remains exhibited traces of 
combustion, and contained carbonized grains of bar- 
ley. Together with the above-mentioned works of 
art were found many fragments of bones, both of 
domesticated and wild animals, viz. : horned, horses, 
swine, dogs of various sizes, goats, sheep, cats, elks, 
stags, aurochs, bears, wild boars, foxes, beavers, tor- 
toises, several birds, and other animals.* 

II. Tertiary. 

1. Pliocene. Newer Pliocene. — Immediately 
that we leave the accumulations wherein are buried 
monuments of man, and step downward into pre-his- 

* Proceedings of Imperial Institute of Vienna, June, 1857. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 37 

toric times, we find two facts at the threshold of our 
investigations. First, that the same creatures did 
not live in the same places then as now; secondly, 
that we have lost many modern species, and have 
found many others entirely unknown at the present. 
These conclusions are correct as well in regard to 
sea as land — to vegetables as to animals. 

On removing the vegetable soil, there will become 
apparent local accumulations of gravel, of brick- 
earth, or of mud. On entering a cavern, there will 
be found a consolidated mass of fragments of former 
life. These depositaries abound in remains of large 
mammalia, especially of proboscidean creatures, far 
outnumbering and overmatching their successors of 
the present day. South America has its charnel 
plains of megatherium bones, North America of 
mastodons, India of elephants, England of bears, 
elephants, and buffaloes. The groups of these ani- 
mals, which occupied the land during the latter pre- 
historic period, were more varied and numerous in 
large pachy derma ta than the present creation. The 
number and variety of the mammals of England, 
for instance, is as though large districts in the east- 
ern counties had been for ages a zoological garden. 
The bear and hyena owned the dens, the rhinoceros 
and elephant the plains. Large folios have been 
published, descriptive of the marvels of zoology at 
this date. Our local museums contain innumerable 
fragments of the former tenants of our land; the 
county histories record them ; ancient romances show 

4* 



38 THE EARTH AND THE W0EJ). 

them to have been the ground-work of much super- 
stition and amusing error. 

Notwithstanding the labours of many geologists 
in the fields of the newer deposits, it may still be 
truly said, that " of all geological periods, that which 
comes nearest our own times is the least under- 
stood."* Hugh Miller conveys a vivid image of 
the border land in his latest (and alas! his last) 
work. 

" We can trace several of our existing quadrupeds, 
such as the badger, the hare, the fox, the red deer, 
and the wild cat, up till the earlier times of the 
Pleistocene ; and not a few of our existing shells, 
such as the great pecten, the edible oyster, the whelk 
and the pelican's foot shell, up till the greatly ear- 
lier times of the Coralline Crag. 

" But at certain definite lines in the deposits of 
the past, representative of certain points in the 
course of time, the existing mammals and molluscs, 
even such of our British shells as seem to have en- 
joyed, as species, the longest term of life, cannot be 
traced beyond the times of the Pliocene deposits. 
We detect their remains in a perfect state of keep- 
ing in almost every shell-bearing bed, till we reach 
the Red and Coralline Crags, where we find them 
for the last time; and on passing into older and 
deeper lying beds, we see their places taken by other 
shells, of species altogether distinct. The very com- 
mon shell, Purpura lapillus, for instance, is found 
# Mr. Godwin Austen, Geol. Jour., vol. xiii., p. 69. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 39 

in our raised beaches, in our Clyde beds, in our 
boulder clays and maminaliferous crags, and finally 
in the Red Crag, beyond which it fails to appear. 

" And such, also, is the history of the common 
edible mussel and common periwinkle; whereas the 
common edible cockle, and common edible pecten 
(P. opercularis,) occur not only in the successive 
beds, but in the coral crag also. 

" They are older by a whole deposit than their 
present contemporaries, the periwinkle and mussel ; 
and these, in turn, seem of older standing than shells 
such as Murex erinaceus, that has not been traced 
beyond the times of the mammaliferous crag, or than 
shells such as Scrobicularia piperata, that has not 
been detected in more ancient deposits than raised 
sea-beaches of the later periods, and the elevated 
bottoms of old estuaries and lagoons. We thus 
know that, in certain periods nearer or more remote, 
all our existing molluscs began to exist, and that 
they had no existence during the previous periods."* 

There are 442 species of shells found in the Eng- 
lish crag deposits, of which, from the uppermost crag, 
69 are recent and 12 extinct; from the middle or red 
crag, 130 are recent and 95 extinct; from the lower 
crag, 168 are recent, and 159 extinct. Of the re- 
cent species in the upper crag, 12 species now in- 
habit the arctic seas, and do not range to our pre- 
sent shores ; and in the lower crag, 27 species now 
dwell in southern seas, and do not approach our mo- 
dern shores, f 
* Ly ell's Supplement, p. 4. f Testimony of Rocks, p. 195 



40 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

The proofs are overwhelming of the prevalence, 
at the early Pliocene period, of a warmer tempera- 
ture than the present, which became gradually 
cooler, until it became colder than at present, and 
ended in arctic rigour, attaining its maximum of 
cold during the glacial period of the boulder clay, 
which contains shells of recent species now living in 
arctic seas. 

Miocene. — A deposit of shell-sand is found on 
the Loire, and other places in France, which con- 
tains a vast number of beautiful marine forms, of 
which only about 25 per cent, are recent, and only 
about 15 per cent, found in the lower crag. The 
remains of lamentine, morse, sea-calf, and dolphin, 
with shells and corals, indicate a higher tempera- 
ture than the crag ; as do the terrestrial remains, 
consisting of deinotherium, mastodon, rhinoceros, 
hippopotamus, cheiropotamus, dichobune, and deer, 
all of extinct species. In deposits of the same age 
in India, are found a wondrous assemblage of mam- 
malian remains, fine specimens of which may be 
seen in the British Museum; deinotheria, masto- 
dons, several species of elephants, sivatherium, gi- 
raffe, camel, antelopes, monkeys, crocodiles, all of 
gigantic dimensions. 

Switzerland displays the beds of some ancient 
fresh-water lakes, containing the bones of no less 
than 28 distinct species of turtle, most of them 
having a local range,, distributed, in different pro- 
portions, in the marl deposits of the molasse of that 
country. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 41 

Eocene. — We enter not on a formation, but on a 
world when we come to the eocene, the dawn of the 
other world which exists around us. It has its 
oceans, whose sediment imbedded the nautilus with 
hundreds of delicate shells occupying all their 
depths; its estuaries, whose ancient silt we now 
turn into pottery; its vast rivers, with long lines of 
fresh-water shells ; its low hills and islands, covered 
with vegetation like that of the eastern archipelago ; 
its pebble banks and sand beaches; nay, its succes- 
sion of all these, with life appropriate to each. 
Around its lakes we find remains of a numerous but 
peculiar fauna, all now extinct. 

In one locality, and in one bed alone of this for- 
mation, the gypsum building-stone beds at Mont- 
martre, there have been found associated with pal- 
mettos the relics of about fifty species of quadrupeds. 
About four-fifths of these belong to a division of the 
pachydermatous creatures now represented by the 
tapirs and the daman of the Cape. There were a 
few carnivorous animals, ten kinds of birds, and 
other representative races. 

The Eocene sands and building stones occur ex- 
tensively around the great centres of European ci- 
vilization, and have been consequently very largely 
explored, and their contents ascertained. Collec- 
tions of fossil shells from the Paris basin, from our 
own London clay, and from the Hampshire series, 
are not uncommon. To the eye of the conchologist 
these assemblages have a pale foreign look. 



42 



THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



The ascertained group of life in the London ter 
tiaries is — 



Mammalia, . 


. 6 


Birds, . 


. 4 


Reptiles, 


. 23 


Fishes, 


. 84 


Molluscs, 


. 280 


Articulated animals, 


. 33 


Radiated animals, . 


. 11 


Zoophytes, . 


. 10 


Foraminifera, 


. 28* 



The most experienced and indefatigable labourer 
in the field, Mons. Deshayes, after thirty years' 
study, announces it as his mature opinion, that 
there is no single species common to these beds and 
also to the chalk. There is a positive and abrupt 
transition between the species of molluscous life in 
the two great formations, and an equally decided 
and total change between the floras of the two for- 
mations. 

The Middle Eocene is characterized, throughout 
a belt of land extending from Persia to Paris, and 
across the new world, as the period of the nummu- 
lites. 

These foraminifera are minute marine chambered 
shells, found in such myriads as to constitute large 
masses of the prevalent rock in many districts. 

There are between seven and eight hundred dis- 
tinct species of these little creatures, none known 
before the chalk, the bulk in the Middle Eocene, 
* Prestwich, Geol. Journ., vol. x. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 43 

and not a single species in any later formation, or 
in the recent world. 

The impression produced by a view of life in the 
whole tertiary period undoubtedly is, that there was 
a gradual mutation from the lowest upwards, all 
tending to approximate to the present, and yet re- 
presentative of it, and not identical. It is evident 
also, on a large comparison, that the migration of 
species was going on all through these periods. 
Physical changes were introductory of life changes, 
and portions of one fauna were preserved into an- 
other, and other portions wholly dropped.* 

The Eocene deposits at Whitecliff Bay, in the Isle 
of Wight, afford, according to the late Professor E. 
Forbes, proofs of the following succession. First, 
there is a considerable thickness of mottled clays 
resting on the chalk, then the fauna commences 
with numerous peculiar myatiform shells, pectuncula, 
ostrea, and others, in a series of sands and clays, 
the earliest fossiliferous bed consisting of a thin 
stratum of the shells of a pteropodous mollusc, (di- 
trupa plana,) which continued but a short time in 
life and then became totally extinct. In the midst 
of this group occur strata charged with myriads of 
nummulites; next, the sea-bed became covered with 
a fresh-water lake, as is denoted by a stratum of 
paludina clay, then returned to a brackish state, 
again a fresh-water lake, lastly a marine condition, 
enabling oysters to live for a short time. Similar 

* Prestwich, Geol. Jour., vol. xiii., p. 132. 



44 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

and yet varied changes were contemporaneous in 
other Eocene localities. 

M. De la Harpe, after a full examination of the 
plants of the Eocene flora, concludes " That there 
exists, from the lowest tertiary forms upwards, a 
gradual mutation in the vegetation, which tends to 
approximate it by slow degrees to the existing flora 
of our own climate, and yet that scarcely one spe- 
cies has passed the boundary of the Eocene to pe- 
netrate into the Miocene, and not one of the Mio- 
cene has been prolonged into the existing flora."* 

Chalk. — The fossils of the chalk show, for the 
most part, a deep ocean with few shallows and 
islands. Sea-urchins, sponges, and corals abound 
in many places, with ammonites, belemnites, turri- 
lites, baculites, and other representatives of extinct 
families of cephalopods. Remains of sharks and 
curious-looking fishes, with occasional bones of sau- 
rian creatures, occur in some spots, but in general, 
terebratula and small oysters indicate " the deep, 
deep sea." Ranging along a parallel far south of 
our own island, the lower chalk is distinguished by 
a limestone, bearing abundant traces of an extinct 
family of shell-fish, called Hippurites, each fashioned 
like certain conical drinking jugs of our forefathers, 
without handle or pedestal. 

The lower chalk passes downwards into a gray 
rock with green grains and layers of sandstone. 
This is the firestone of the geologists ; at other places 
* President's Address, Geol. Jour. ; 1857. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALAEONTOLOGY. 45 

it is substituted by chalk marl. In both these for- 
mations occur beautiful cephalopods of excessive ra- 
rity, or quite unknown in the white chalk above. 
These deposits are based upon another rich bed of 
organic remains, which, in the south-east of England, 
assumes the character of a blue clay, and is called 
the gault, in the west of England it is the scythe- 
stone layer of the Black Downs : on the continent 
it is largely developed as a peculiar sandstone. The 
fossils obtained from this deposit, either at Folkstone 
or Blackdown, attract attention by the preservation 
of their framework in ornamental repair, still glis- 
tening with mother-of-pearl in the gault, or shining 
with silicified tubercles in the sands. 

The lowest beds show ample traces of sea margin. 
The green sand is largely developed in the south- 
east of England. Its floated timber, occasional 
leaves, and varied shells, show a littoral deposit of 
enormous duration and extent. 

The section of the lower green sand exposed in 
the cliffs on the south-west shore of the Isle of Wight, 
affords an excellent opportunity of investigating its 
fossil contents. Usually, in England, it is an un- 
interesting deposit, with a surface of poor land and 
sections of siliceous barren sands. In this locality, 
however, the beds are of more varied composition. 
They have been raised at a low angle, the coast line 
cuts them off diagonally; ruin has attacked them 
variously, owing to the different resistance of the 
materials. The leaves of the wonderful book thus 
5 



46 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

opened have been carefully deciphered by Dr. Fitton, 
and measured by Captain Ibbetson.* 

In the space of about two and a half miles there 
are fifty-five strata, which, if piled one on another, 
would make a thickness of 800 feet. These are di- 
vided into fifty-five layers of varying thickness, each 
characterized by different conditions of structure 
and contained life, so that we have here the basins 
of fifty-five successive seas. 

Oolite.— In the delta of the mighty rivers of the 
latest Oolite period, we find the bones of the great 
lizard of the weald,— the Iguanodon,— with ferns 
and pines. Dr. Mantell, the historian of this epoch, 
enumerates five genera of terrestrial plants, several 
species of river shells, a small fresh-water crustacean, 
fishes allied to the bony pike and the shark, two or 
three genera of turtles, and seven or eight species 
of most marvellous terrestrial saurian reptiles ; at 
least six well-marked coniferous trees, and nume- 
rous other plants. We have in the Isle of Wight, 
and on the south coast of England, the shallows at 
the mouth of a vast river flowing through tropical 
forests of peculiar vegetation, inhabited by gigantic 
creatures, elsewhere unknown before or since. 

The Purbeck beds of the Upper Oolite are well 
developed in our own country, and, having been 
wrought for ages for building stone, were supposed 
to have yielded up all their fossils, in the shape of 
the abundant lake shells which characterize the Pur- 
* See Geol. Jour., vol. xii. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALAEONTOLOGY. 47 

beck marble; but about twelve months ago Mr. 
Beckles astonished and delighted the Palaeontolo- 
gists by forwarding, weekly, remains of new animals 
discovered in a quarry, formed, apparently, in the 
margin of an ancient lake in the Purbecks. So new 
and numerous were these, that the mammalian forms 
known to have existed before the tertiary were 
speedily doubled. 

Below the Purbecks we find the Portland, bear- 
ing in its midst the cycadian grove whose imbedded 
remains, now brought to light by the quarrymen, tell 
us of the subtropical plants once flourishing where 
the scanty furze can now barely exist. 

Below this is the Coral Rag, with its rich marine 
fauna of shells and corals, forming, in fact, a reef 
like those so fatally abundant in Torres Straits. 
The beautiful urchins and crinoids of this formation 
must attract the attention of the most casual visiter 
to an oolite collection. Then come the fossils of 
the great Bath stone, showing a variable sea ; the 
Stonesfield oolite, with its opossum races, the lower 
oolites, and a large development of vegetation, pro- 
ducing considerable deposits of coal. This is prin- 
cipally coniferous, and it appears that the fir tribe 
attained its comparative maximum in the oolite era. 
The lowest of the oolite beds, the Lias, is well 
known as the magazine of remains which have ex- 
cited the amazement of the vulgar and the still 
greater surprise of the savans, — the great saurian 
bones. The capabilities of language and the possi- 



48 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

bilities of art have alike been tasked, to do justice 
to the amphibian creatures of the liassic period, and, 
after all, the style of being is so foreign to any thing 
we see around us that we feel ourselves to be in pos- 
session only of caricature outlines of the wondrous 
creatures whose bony framework is so common in 
our museums. 

The thinnest bed of fossil shells, be they of the 
least considerable amount in the catalogue of the 
present, yet are connected by their containing me- 
dium, their local condition and associations, with 
the arrangements of the universe. How is it that 
they correspond with their matrix, -whether of clay 
or sand, limestone or mud? How is it that they 
match the vegetation disclosed in the ruins of the 
adjacent land surfaces? Palaeontology is fertile in 
such questions, and not dimly is the answer litho- 
graphed in its ample pages. " In the beginning 
Grod made the heavens and the earth." 

The Trias, or Upper New Red Sandstone, is the 
storehouse of a novel and beautiful flora, and its 
slabs bear impressions of gigantic frog-like crea- 
tures. 

In the Permian we find a still further departure 
from the forms of the present, and about sixty spe- 
cies of fossil plants, with shells and fish of deep-sea 
kinds. 

The Coal Measures speak to us of profuse vege- 
tation, but, as is well known, of a type entirely dis- 
similar, as a whole, from that of the present day. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 49 

The cases of our museums maybe filled from one of 
our British collieries, or replenished from those of 
Europe, or America, or New Holland, but the re- 
sults, as to genera, will be altogether the same. 
Ferns will predominate in prodigious numbers and 
variety; club-mosses and equisetae, in size and as- 
pect greatly varying from the present; a few cone- 
bearers, no forest trees, no grasses, no fleshy fruits. 
The contrast between the past and the present be- 
comes strikingly apparent in the flora of the coal. 
We are actually, at Kew and Chatsworth, trying, by 
the aid of combustion, which this ancient flora sup- 
ports, to raise artificially a temperature sufficiently 
high to foster a few of their degenerate descendants 
on the very sites where they once flourished in con- 
genial native freedom. Araucarian-like pine trees, 
fern forest-trees, with trunks displaying symmetri- 
cal and beautiful ornamentation, feathery ferns of 
150 graceful forms, all then grew under the same 
skies where now the furze and heath, stunted and 
swept by the wintry blast, constitute the sole cover- 
ing of the moorland. 

The presence of insects, land-crabs, and large 
reptiles, in coal-bearing strata, is well ascertained, 
and completes the picture of the peculiar and yet 
complete condition of the carboniferous era, as a 
platform of vast preparation for the material benefit 
of man, whereon all was perfect, though subservient 
to an end then in the far future. " The flora of 
the Coal Measures was the richest and most luxuri- 

5* 



50 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

ant, in at least individual productions, "with which 
the fossil botanist has formed any acquaintance. 
Never before nor since did our planet bear so rank 
a vegetation as that of which the numerous coal 
seams and inflammable shale of the carboniferous 
period form but a portion of the remains; the por- 
tion spared in the first instance by dissipation and 
decay, and in the second by the denuding agencies. 
Almost all our coal — the stored-up fuel of a world 
— forms but a comparatively small part of the pro- 
duce of this wonderful flora.* 

The coal of each stratum displays its own asso- 
ciation of plants, and so, on a wider scale, the coal 
of different formation exhibits characteristic vegeta- 
tion. Thus the vascular vegetables prevail in the 
lower coal, ferns and cone-bearers in the upper, cy- 
cadians in the oolite and forest trees in the tertiary. 

The coal formation of Saxony has been well investi- 
gated by Greinitz. It displays five zones of successive 
vegetable life. There are 156 species of plants. The 
first zone has only one species out of twenty-three 
common to it and the second and third; between the 
second and third there are thirty-three species com- 
mon; between the third and fourth, twenty-four; 
the third and fifth, thirty-three ; the fourth and fifth, 
thirty-five. 

Only three plants pass upwards into the Permian, 
so that the coal deposits are decidedly different from 
the beds above as they are from the strata below. 
* Testimony of the Rocks, p. 26. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 51 

We commonly find a coarse clay into which run 
the roots of trees, and occasionally mud with fresh- 
water shells ; then a layer of matted plants and 
coal; over this a bed of sand-stone; another layer 
of clay, and again coal, and so on for several suc- 
cessions. Each of these required time for its se- 
parate organizations to live, flourish, become im- 
mensely numerous, and die, or be destroyed, every 
stage of life subsisting on the settled ruins of its 
predecessors. About ten years since, in cutting 
through the rocks for the Bolton railway, six miles 
north of Manchester, five fossil trees were found in 
a position vertical to the plane of the strata. The 
roots were imbedded in soft clay immediately 
above a thin bed of coal. Near the foot of one tree 
lay more than a bushel of clay nodules, each en- 
closing a cone of Lepidostrobus variabilis. The 
bark of the tree was converted into coal, averaging 
half an inch in thickness, and the interior of the 
stem was replaced by shale. The largest trunk 
measured fifteen and a half feet at the base, arid a 
half at the top, and the fragment was eleven feet 
high. One tree had large spreading roots, four 
feet in circumference. By the care of Mr. Hawke- 
shaw, these interesting remains are covered in and 
preserved on the spot where they were found. 

"Perhaps it may be asked, why were not these 
islands, endowed with a mild climate and a rich 
though uniform vegetation, destined for the abode 
of human beings ? The answer is, that it was ne- 



52 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

cessary for the house to be fully prepared before 
the master was invited to inhabit it — that a country 
without domestic animals, a field without flowers,* 
a wood without birds, a climate warm indeed, but 
probably unhealthy, would be no desirable abode. 
But I prefer to leave the question unanswered, and 
to own that although we are often able to perceive 
in little things the regulation by law which rules in 
the household of nature, our conclusions become ad- 
venturous and faulty when we deal with the grand 
plans laid down by the Lawgiver of nature ; and we 
shall rather own at once that, with all our clever- 
ness, we are only children feeling our way about."f 

The Mountain Limestone at the base of the coal 
is the scar rock, which makes the scenery on the 
edges of the coal basins frequently so very pictu- 
resque. It is rich in organic remains of corals, 
crinoids, and shells. 

The Devonian introduces us into a new group of 
organic remains, on which volumes have been writ- 
ten, and volumes more may be penned, without ex- 
hausting the story of its wonders. There are at 
least five separate floors of life in the Devonian, re- 
presented probably in different localities by land, 
fresh-water, or marine conditions on the same hori- 
zon. In these five ocean platforms occur seventeen 
species of sea-urchins, no one kind being common 
to any two divisions. 

* This is not now a true picture, for a flower-spike has at 
length been discovered in the coal-beds. 

f Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man, p. 7 Bohn. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 53 

In the beautiful work by the brothers Sandberger 
on the Devonian rocks in Nassau, there are enume- 
rated about 269 distinct species of organisms, the 
delineations of which show not only the exquisite 
perfection of structural adaptation, but the exquisite 
beauty of creative ornament. 

The Devonian rocks, in the form of old red sand- 
stone, too, exhibit the wondrous fish-remains which, 
under the poetic pen of Hugh Miller, became in- 
vested with sudden but lasting popularity. 

There were land-surfaces in those days, for a 
whole forest of vegetation has left its prints there, 
with fresh-water shells and bones of air-breathing 
reptiles. 

The Devonian is pre-eminently a passage group 
between the Silurian and the coal. Vegetation, 
profuse in the latter, occurs sparingly in the former, 
just as a premonition. The marine life of the one 
is connected with that of the other, not by identity 
of species but by a certain similarity of genera. An 
observer will soon learn to distinguish between the 
two, but will not lose the impression of a general 
resemblance as compared with other formations. 

The Upper Silurian yields zoophytes, corals, 
bryozoa, crinoids, very numerous shells, and trilo- 
bites; in the uppermost beds, remains of small, 
powerful predaceous fish. The Lower Silurians are 
abundant also in all these classes save the last, 
though with few exceptions the species are different, 
and the aspect of the whole group of beings de- 



54 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

cidedly distinct. The Silurian alum shales of Swe- 
den contain accumulations of sea-weed, which now 
yield valuble economic products. 

We find in these rocks the clearest evidences of 
adaptation in the character of the animal remains of 
their successive beds. One kind of life flourishes 
in the fine shales, the consolidated, impalpable mud 
of the early seas ; another affects the coarser sand- 
stone, loving the littoral conditions suited to its ex- 
istence; a third abounds only in shell sand; whilst 
the most numerous occupy the calcareous zones, 
which are the chief sepulchres of the remote past. 

The Silurian masses have a wide range, contri- 
buting largely to the elevated surface of the globe 
from pole to pole, everywhere exhibiting similar 
characteristic fossils. The monarch of shrimp-like 
creatures, Pterygotus prohlematicus, attained a 
length of four feet; its companions, the trilobites, 
reach their maximum development here ; few fishes 
only have been yet discovered, and rare traces of 
plants on land surfaces. 

The first appearance of every creature in the 
geological scale is not in a rudimentary or imper- 
fect condition in any sense. Sir Koderick Murchi- 
son thus writes of the lowest discovered fish in the 
Silurian. " But here we must recollect that, when 
first created, the onchus of the uppermost Silurian 
rocks was a fish of the highest and most composite 
order; and that it exhibits no symptoms whatever 
of transition from a lower to a higher grade of 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 55 

the family, any more than the crustaceans, cepha- 
lopods and other shells of the lowest fossiliferous 
rocks ; all of which offer the same proofs of elaborate 
organization. In short, the first created fish, like 
the first forms of these other orders, was just as 
marvellously constructed as the last which made its 
appearance, or is now living, in our seas."* 

So striking is the sudden addition of life in the 
seas of the Upper Silurian, that in one band — the 
Niagara limestone, equivalent to our Wenlock at 
Derby — 150 new species suddenly make their ap- 
pearance. 

The results of extensive observations in various 
regions show that marine species had then a wider 
range than now, so that the climatal and physical 
conditions of the ocean over large areas of the 
globe must have been more uniform than at 
present. We find even then, however, that par- 
ticular localities were characterized by the predo- 
minance of particular species. The trilobite of the 
lowest fossiliferous rocks in New England (para- 
doxides) is the same that is found in our own 
primordial zone. The same sea-shells prevailed, 
from the Arctic regions to the equator and Aus- 
tralia. 

The Camhrina. — Below the Silurian we find an 
enormous thickness of slate rocks, long considered 
as azoic. Their apparent condition in this respect, 
however, now appears to be more the result of the 

*Siluria,p.239. 



56 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

processes to which they have been subjected than 
to their formation in the lifeless state of the globe ; 
for minute research in one or two places, as the 
Longmynd, has discovered amongst the lowest of 
these some traces of life and vital forces. 

The sea-weeds of the lower slate rocks, some of 
the earliest organisms which geology unfolds to us, 
resemble as a group their successors, which line our 
present shore. 

The Longmynd rocks, which lie at the base of 
the great system of Silurian life, have yielded to 
the diligent search of Mr. Salter traces of a trilo- 
bite, abundant marks of worms, accompanied by 
ripple and drainage marks, sun tracks, and rain 
markings, showing that even down in these lonely 
recesses of the past the same power and modes of 
action were in operation as now. It may be con- 
sidered as settled, that there is no system of azoic 
sedimentary rocks. 

Every display of intelligence in the works of 
creation may minister both to the increase of our 
knowledge and the excitement of devout feelings. 
Although true piety can neither be created nor sup- 
ported by such studies alone, yet an intelligent reli- 
gious habit may find much in geology that is well 
calculated to gratify and improve the mind. If the 
enduring works of the Roman, or the rude monu- 
ments of the ancient Briton, have charms for the 
antiquary, irrespective of intrinsic beauty or fitness, 
how much more attractive should be those relics 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALAEONTOLOGY. 57 

which are not only connected with the highest as- 
sociations, but are in themselves manifestations of 
exquisite, because of infinite, skill! 

Among the laws of the distribution of ancient 
animal life we may state: 1. Its occurrence in 
definite groups in connexion with certain layers of 
rock. 2. The attainment by each species of a 
maximum development in one formation, and its 
being limited in time. 3. Its adaptation to the 
composition of the masses in which it occurs. 4. 
The narrowing of the local range of species as we 
descend in time. 

Thus, lifting the curtain of the past, we are struck 
by the endless procession of animated existence ap- 
pearing on the stage, moving slowly across it, and 
visibly ending not by worn-out life, but by changed 
conditions. 

One source of difficulty in this as in all sciences 
arises from its terminology. This is altogether con- 
ventional. The oolite of one district is represented 
hj an unoolitic rock in another: the sandstone of 
one by the shale or limestone of another. The 
groups are intended to comprise certain successions 
which have a common aspect. This common aspect 
is either in mineral constitution or in organic re- 
mains, or both. Between most of such groups there 
are passage beds, showing that the extinction of one 
set of life and the introduction of another was not 

an arbitrary act, but a process connected with other 
6 



58 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

agencies as means, some of which we cannot now 
discover. 

We cannot announce that there have been abso- 
lute life-breaks in the past, for evidence is continu- 
ally coming in, showing that such lines do not exist, 
or if existing in one district, do not extend to others. 

There are only about half a dozen fossils which, 
in the enormous Silurian area of North America, 
pass upwards from the lower into the upper beds ; 
but in Europe the numbers doing so are very great, 
showing that, within certain limits, the permanence 
of species depends on local not on general condi- 
tions. 

We must abandon, therefore, the notion of a suc- 
cession of universal life-annihilations antecedent to 
the present. Such processes have been effected by 
the operation of laws working through ages, under 
conditions and with immediate object to us unknown. 
From the first, the method of the Divine government 
through the agency of second causes has been the 
same as w T e now see in operation. 

We are apt to connect the idea of miracle with 
agency greatly more violent than the present; but 
there is no necessity for this. The course of ob- 
served phenomena leads us to expect rather, that in 
the beginning, as now, God chose to work through 
the influences in daily employment rather than by 
unusual acts. The latter have been exhibited in 
connexion with the establishment of His truth on the 
earth, its conservation, and the mission of His Son. 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALEONTOLOGY. 59 

To these, as marked out by the singular power of 
the testimony, we should give all heed. 

Neither do we find any proofs of a universal phy- 
sical break at any time. The rule has been pro- 
gress in detail; here a volcanic outburst and there 
a tranquil deposition, all slowly working together 
for the full accomplishment of the Divine purposes. 

The study of geology puts to flight for ever the 
opinion that God has rarely, if ever, been actively 
employed in creation since the issuing of his fiat for 
its commencement. There have been no long pe- 
riods of inaction, positively no repose whatever of 
Divine power, no trace of quiescence, no proof of 
abandonment for a moment. On the contrary, the 
vast and various provisions for the future welfare 
of man, the wonderful arrangements for the suitable 
maintenance of the animal kingdom, the marvellous 
adjustments of physical phenomena to each other 
and to life, all show the ceaseless workings of Di- 
vine power and goodness. 

It refutes, too, the heathen idea of alternate pa- 
roxysms of energy and periods of abandonment. 
Its stony chronicles echo the sentences of the word, 
saying, that "He never slumbereth or sleepeth;" 
" the darkness and the light are both alike to Him." 

Surely we may add, without the charge of incon- 
gruity, that if He has thus cared for the material 
universe from all eternity, so He will for the moral. 
The traces of continual provision for the one may 
well be appealed to as tokens of assurance for the 



60 THE EAKTH AND THE WORD. 

other. It is not, therefore, as a stranger that the 
geologist opens the Word of God. He is prepared 
for a message which tells him of God's love from 
before the creation of the world, of his provision for 
the insignificant and the obscure, of His watch and 
ward for aye, of the preparations for another ad- 
vent, even that of the Great Deliverer, of all the 
resources of salvation, and of the still future trans- 
actions when the sum of the whole shall be declared. 

If the heavens are telling the glory of God, if 
the firmament showeth forth his handy work, and if 
the earth declares his praise, in regard to their 
frame and continuance, much more do the facts of 
redemption declare with emphasis -the infinitude of 
his compassion and love. It is given to man to 
avail himself of both. The mine, deep hidden in 
the earth, thrown up into access by some ancient 
pre-arranged catastrophe, will be useless for him, 
unless he actively explores and wins its treasures. 
The richer mine of Divine favour to the soul, 
opened out in God's Word, will be alike unavailing 
for him, unless he gives himself to the investigation 
in the spirit of one who has all to gain and eteroity 
at stake. 

"And surely it must be gratifying to see a science 
formerly classed, and not perhaps unjustly, among 
the most pernicious to faith, once more become her 
handmaid; to see her now, after so many years of 
wandering from theory to theory, or rather from 
vision to vision, return once more to the home where 



THE CONTINUANCE. — PALAEONTOLOGY. 61 

she was born, and to the altar at 'which she made 
her first simple offerings; no longer, as she first 
went forth, a wilful, dreamy, empty-handed child, 
but with a matronly dignity, and a priest-like step, 
and a bosom full of well-earned gifts to pile upon 
its sacred hearth." * 

A review of the domains of former organic life 
gives us a definite impression of the power of death. 
Why all this display of successive races, which 
flourished but to decay? Why all this opulence 
and beauty in adorning the fleeting ephemera of 
vanishing platforms? Why all this wisdom of 
structure in machinery so speedily disjointed and 
laid by? Why the scythe of the destroyer obtruded 
from the first and most conspicuous, all down the 
ages? " So it seemed good in thy sight," is all 
that the humble Christian would say, as with pro- 
found awe he contemplates the abounding resources, 
infinite operations, and inscrutable ways, of his 
Heavenly Father. 

Not alike are the sepulchres of the fossil and the 
cemeteries of man. The tribes of lower animated 
nature have had their final development and display ; 
but no one human being has ever been lost from 
the muster-roll of life, or ever will be. 

We believe that, in some way, the phenomena of 
the extinct races are connected with those of the 
inextinguishable : — 

* Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion. — Wiseman. 

6* 



62 THE EARTH AND THE WOKD. 

u The soul's high price 
Is writ in all the conduct of the skies. 
The soul's high price is the creation's key, 
Unlocks its mysteries, and naked lays 
The genuine cause of every deed divine: 
That is the chain of ages, which maintains 
Their obvious correspondence, and unites 
Most distant periods in one blest design." — Young. 



HISTORY. 63 



CHAPTER IV. 



HISTOBY. 



u Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth V 1 

Job xxxviii. 4. 

If chronologists are at fault concerning the cor- 
rect dates of events which have transpired since 
the discovery of letters, why should it be expected 
that certainty can be attained in affixing the way- 
marks of pre-historic time? The celebrated deduc- 
tion of Chalmers, that the writings of Moses do not 
fix the antiquity of the globe, but only that of the 
genus man, has its counterpart in geologic truth ; 
for our science does not fix the positive antiquity of 
the genus, but only its relative age, in the earth. 
Geology has no kingly dynasties by which to index 
its events, no world-renowned potentate from whose 
reign to date its progress: but it has its own stately 
successions and majestic gradations, its own pro- 
gressive dioramas, every picture of which testifies 
to the skill and goodness of the Great Artificer. 
It shows, in ages long past, the flow of years and 
seasons like our own, each one bearing the imprint 
of the Divine goodness, in order that we might af- 
terwards read the long catalogue of his operations, 
and glorify him " by whom all things consist." 



61 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

Science can tell us when the epoch of coal mea- 
sure vegetation ceased, when the age of gigantic 
reptiles came to an end, when the colossal ele- 
phantoid races dwindled and became extinct, when 
fruit trees and grasses began to appear, when all 
things tended towards the production of an Eden 
in the earth: it can tell us of the comparatively 
modern origin of present species, but of positive 
chronology it knows absolutely nothing. For that 
we must resort to history. Of all histories, there 
is but one which has any pretensions to fulfil the 
task, and that one has irrefutable claims to infalli- 
bility. 

This being so, we should cease to expect from the 
Bible the date of the world's origin, or of any 
event prior to the appearance of man; and w 7 e 
should cease to expect from geology any disclosures 
as to the chronologies of mankind. 

" Oh, how the human mind wearies herself 
With her own wandering, and, involved in gloom 
Impenetrable, speculates amiss! 
Measuring, in her folly, things divine 
By human ; laws inscribed on adamant 
By laws of man's device ; and counsels fixed 
For ever, by the hours that pass and die." 

Cowper, from Milton's Latin Poems. 
But we may, in a general sense, seek to corrobo- 
rate the one record by the other; and, with this 
view, we feel that one of the desiderata in geology 
is to define the limits in the scale of the past within 
which the present state of things commenced. 



HISTORY. 65 

We*can show that the existing configuration of 
land and water obtained ever since the time which 
history records. The positive volume and level of 
the Nile, Euphrates, Mediterranean, and Red Sea, 
have evidently remained materially unaltered for 
upwards of three thousand years. 

From the mention, after the flood, of localities 
spoken of before, from the tenor of references to 
the earth "that then was," and from geological 
inductions from the effect of causes still in opera- 
tion, we conclude that there has been no substantial 
change, though constant small oscillations, as it 
were, of land and water, both in height and breadth, 
since the time when " God saw every thing that he 
had made, and behold it was very good." — Gen. ii. 

The present assemblage of animated life can be 
carried back to the date of the six days' creation. 

It can be shown, by good negative evidence, that 
man belongs not to either of the three great pre- 
ceding life-periods. Sadly bereft would he have 
been amidst the ocean life and agitations of the 
paleozoic strata; quite at a loss on the low islands 
of the coal vegetation, unsuited for food or shelter; 
altogether unprovided for by the brine springs of 
the trias, where huge labyrinthodons squatted on 
the dull shore ; nor in the earlier liassic days could 
he have been fit companion for monstrous saurians ; 
nor in later triassic either, though its lands were 
fringed with palms, for there lurked the mighty 
iguanodon. The islets of cretaceous seas would 



66 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

have afforded no fitting place for him. 'Sorely 
beset would he have been amidst the mammoths, 
mastodons, megatheriums, and elephants of the ter- 
tiary ; altogether out of place, in these parts, during 
the glacial period preceding his actual advent. 

" We are now," says Cuvier, "in the middle of 
at least the fourth succession of land animals. 
After an age of reptiles, another of mammoths, 
mastodons, and megatheriums, there has arrived an 
age in which the human species, aided by domestic 
animals, governs and peaceably improves the earth." 
The arrangement of the surface, in the latter ter- 
tiary times, had become varied by patches of land, 
fresh water, and ocean, alternately dotting the sur- 
face, as at present; and this, too, by a process which 
was simply in continuance of foregone geological 
phenomena in each case, not the result of one huge 
cataclysm. 

It is, therefore, next to impossible with regard to 
several of the alluvial gravels and soils, to say whe- 
ther they are pre-historic or not. 

There is nothing, however, in geology at variance 
with the fact that the creation of man on the earth 
took place 4004 years B. c. Science shows that all 
things were ready; and then, reverently turning to 
Scripture, we read that " the Lord God formed man 
of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nos- 
trils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul." — Gen. ii. 7. 

An elaborate attempt has lately been made by 



HISTORY. 67 

an accomplished Romanist writer, to prove that the 
work of creation, spoken of in the first verse of 
Genesis, is the work of the six days, and not the 
retrospect of a former world; that all species of 
plants and animals, both fossil and recent, were 
created at once.* 

Reference to facts, so often quoted in this con- 
troversy as to be familiar even to weariness, will 
suffice to show how untenable is this representation, 
and, therefore, how it must, if persevered in, prove 
injurious to the cause of truth. 

Let me take the reader to a low, crumbling cliff, 
on the Suffolk coast, apparently a mass of loose 
sand and gravel. To the casual observer, it would 
appear to present no obstacle to the theory of the 
learned Abbe. A tumultuous rush of water, 
charged with sand and sediment, will account for 
all. A narrower inspection discovers the following 
state of things. 

First, at the base of the cliffs is a bed of dark 
clay containing shells of mollusca, once inhabiting 
fresh-water pools. Above this is an irregular sur- 
face, covered with the roots and stumps of furze 
bushes, like a brake that has been cut but not rooted. 
Over this is a dark brown layer of matted rushes 
and grass-like plants, forming peat. Upon this 
rests ten feet of brown sharp sand, with small peb- 
bles and scarce fragments of shells, now found in 
the Arctic seas. On this is twenty feet of yellow 

*Cosmogonie de la Bible, par M. l'Abbe Soignet: Paris, 1854. 



68 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

sand. Next occurs an irregular large mass of dark 
clay, spotted with numerous fragments of chalk, 
and full of pieces of old rocks, from the large 
boulder down to the tiny fossil. In these trans- 
ported materials, I found rolled fragments of gra- 
nite, red and white, porphyry, basalt, greenstone, 
slate, Silurian rocks, mountain limestone and coal 
grit, permian, red sandstone, lias, oolite with abun- 
dant fossils, and chalk, with its fossils most numerous 
of all. This is surmounted by ten feet of pebbly 
gravel and sand, principally flint; and this again 
by recent soil. On this spot we are therefore com- 
pelled to conclude, that there have happened the 
following succession of events: — 

1. Small pools, in which fresh-water shells and 
weeds grew, and clay accumulated. 

2. A land surface, on which grew a thick brake 
of furze. 

3. The brake became a marsh, and was covered 
with rush-like plants. 

4. This became a sea-beach, on which fine sand 
slowly accumulated, partly by drifts, enclosing 
broken shells of a frigid ocean. 

5. A turbulent rush of viscid mud charged with 
fragments of stone, partly rolled, torn off from 
rocks of Scandinavia or Scotland, and augmented 
by large additions in its southward progress. 

6. A beach on which sand and pebbles alternated, 
with tidal and other unequal forces at play, causing 
appearances the same as on the modern strand be- 
neath. 



HISTORY. 



69 



7. The whole mass raised as the successive plat- 
forms require, and finally lifted into its present 
position, before the formation of the existing soil. 

The growth of animals and vegetables, the attri- 
tion of rocks, their disposition in regular strata, 
are operations requiring long periods for their 
accomplishment. No ingenuity can construct a 
hypothesis in view of the facts which shall possibly 
account for their occurrence within six days or six 
years. What can be said, then, when it is added 
that all this relates merely to one of the minor sub- 
divisions of the geological scale,— the drift or 
boulder clay period, a mere interlude in the post- 
pliocene epoch, not the hundredth part of the whole 
series? A similar analysis of other portions of the 
great succession would show still greater difficulties 
in the application of the theory of the worthy Abbe 
and his numerous coadjutors. 

It is no longer possible to resort to such attempts 
to conform the findings of science to the notions of 
those who are wise beyond what is written. 

"Geology," says the Rev. W. S. Symonds, "may 
be likened" to a large book with many leaves and 
closely printed lines. The student turns page after 
page, until the eye wearies and the brain wanders 
amidst the revelations of the past: he looks at last 
for man's track, man's first appearance, and less 
than a single line of those closely printed records 



70 



THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 



of the planet's history will suffice for all the human 
generations that have existed under the sun."* 

Those who will prosecute science as the ally of 
religion, and not as its enemy or its substitute, will 
occasionally find themselves misunderstood and re- 
pulsed. But it is ever the fortune of truth to be 
first scorned, then tolerated, and next embraced. 

At the present day the world is in dutiful atten- 
dance on the mission of science; let all her behests 
be gladly welcomed, save when she attempts to 
create new religion or new morals. No fear need 
ever be entertained of any real discord between the 
word of God and the works of God. We may fail 
as interpreters on the one hand, or as observers on 
the other, but there is absolute unity, whether with- 
in our ken or not. 

The chronology of history, as corrected by one 
who is giving to the subject the labours of a learned 
life,f is as follows: — 





A.M. 


1857, (October,) 


. 6000 


Destruction of Jerusalem, 


. 4213 


Crucifixion, . 


. 4176 


Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, 


. 4142 


Death of Alexander, . 


. 3821 


Eelease of Jews by Cyrus, 


. 3584 


Sack of Jerusalem, 


. 3514 


David, King, . 


. 3000 


Fall of Troy, . . . 


. 2917 


Exodus, 


. 2453 


Ninus the younger, 


. 2000 



* Stones of the Valley, p. 241. f The Rev. Franke Parker, MSS. 



HISTORY. 






Serniramis, ..... 1958 


Abraham born, 








. 1948 


Ninus, 








. 1906 


Belus, 








. 1844 


Nimrod, 








1788 


The Deluge, . 








. 1656 


Noah born, 








. 1056 


Enoch translated, 








. 987 


Lamech, 








. 874 


Methuselah, . 








687 


Enoch, 








. 622 


Jared, 








460 


Mahalaleel, 








, 395 


Cainan, 








. 325 


Enos, . 








. 235 


Seth, . 








. 133 


Adam created, 






(B. 


c. 4142) 



71 



Geology with its myriads of objects does not 
show us any human traces prior in date to the his- 
torical records. No monuments, telling us of a pre- 
adamite race, have been announced ; we may safely 
conclude none such exist. Immediately on quitting 
the record of Moses and launching into the ocean 
of previous time, we are as a voyager who is with- 
out an index and has to measure time only by events. 
We find proofs of tidal, diurnal, and annual move- 
ments, of generations of animated existence, of con- 
vulsion and tranquillity, of deposition and conso- 
lidation. One cemetery after another, all contain- 
ing the exuviae of distinct races, show the occurrence 
of successive life — periods which soon overwhelm 
us by their numbers, and give up in despair the 



72 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

task of constructing any chronology save that which 
simply registers the relative position of the great 
members of the mighty series. We say with the 
patriarch, " Behold God is great, and we know him 
not ; neither can the number of his years be searched 
out."* The difficulty is not in the subject, but in 
our inadequacy to conceive of the immense duration 
required. We can estimate with tolerable certainty 
the time needed for the formation of a layer of coal 
and a layer of sandstone, and then by multiplying 
arrive at the ages requisite for the production of a 
whole series of coal measures like that of the Jog- 
gins in Nova Scotia. In this* place, there is a range 
of perpendicular cliffs on the coast, composed of re- 
gular coal, all parallel, varying from two inches to 
four feet in thickness. At more than ten distinct 
levels in the series there are stems of trees, each 
originating in a coal seam, all upright, with refer- 
ence to the floor on which they grew, all cut off by 
the layers of mud and coal above. The trees are 
hollow and the bark has become coal, the interior 
filled with sand. Here are then the unequivocal 
remains of ten distinct forests, which grew at ten 
distinct intervals on the same spot, and between the 
interval each in succession became covered w T ith 
clays and sands, which were deposited under water 
and then consolidated into stone. Such instances 
might be cited from nearly all the known deposits 
of the coal; the latter evidently owing much of its 

* Jobxxvi. 26. 



HISTORY. 73 

present character to alternate changes of dry land 
and water: the ocean or lake-bed becoming a vege- 
table soil, sustaining its noble burden of foliage, 
then sinking with it into the deep, the waters again 
resume their dominion, the marine creatures live, 
die, and are entombed — 

"And thy majestic groves of olden time 
Perished with all their dwellers. " 

Again the platform is raised, and the scene slowly 
changed into the present appearance of things. 

It has been computed that the woody matter con- 
tained in the growth of a thousand years, in a dense 
tropical forest, would not constitute a layer of 
mineralized fuel half an inch in thickness. How 
is it, then, possible to assign to the present rate of 
agency of causes now in operation, the production 
of the numerous beds — some whose thickness is 
measured by many feet — existing one over another, 
in the actually explored districts of our coal forma- 
tion? 

Our powers fail us in the attempt to conceive of 
the lapse of time demanded for the whole periods 
of the geologic scale. The formulas would be like 
the figures of stellar astronomy, utterly unin- 
telligible, save as conveying the notion of gra- 
duated immensity. We can conceive of planetary 
spaces somewhat more distinctly by the aid of the 
measurements of geometry within the field of obser- 
vation ; we must be satisfied with some such general 



74 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

aid to our conception of ante-human time afforded 
by the monuments rising out of the darkness of 
the past. " The whole period, from the beginning 
of the primary fossiliferous strata to the present 
day, must be great beyond calculation, and only 
bear comparison with the astronomical cycles, as 
might naturally be expected ; the earth being with- 
out doubt of the same antiquity with the other bodies 
of the solar system,"* 

If we demonstrate that the earth was occupied 
by animated existences long before the chaos out of 
which God evoked the present creation, then there 
can be no longer any reason for surprise at the 
lengthened durations demanded by the geologist. 
We have no record to synchronize with the facts ; 
no lessons to humanity were connected with the 
purposes, save those which are "graven in the 
rock for ever." The mind is baffled in the attempt 
to conceive of the flow of ages whilst the work of 
preparation was proceeding. Still farther back do 
the sacred writers lead us, over-passing all that ge- 
ology in its farthest flights demands, and intro- 
ducing us to the existence of God ere the world 
was. 

" The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his 
way, before his works of old. I was set up from 
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth 
was. When there were no depths, I was brought 
forth; when there were no fountains abounding 
* Mrs. Somerville, Physical Geography. 



HISTORY. 75 

with water. Before the mountains were settled, 
before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet 
he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the 
highest part of the dust of the world. When he 
prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set 
a compass upon the face of the depth: when he 
established the clouds above: when he strengthened 
the fountains of the deep : when he gave to the sea 
his decree, that the waters should not pass his com- 
mandment: when he appointed the foundations of 
the earth : then I was by him, as one brought up 
with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing al- 
ways before him ; rejoicing in the habitable parts 
of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of 
men."* 

We have got far back into the ages ; science with 
its revelations, is now far behind; we have only the 
simple word of God, as our instructor and guide, 
and before us the eternal. 

" We aspire in vain to assign limits to the works 
of creation in space, whether we examine the starry 
heavens, or that world of minute animalcules which 
is revealed to us by the microscope. We are pre- 
pared, therefore, to find that in time also the con- 
fines of the universe lie beyond the reach of mortal 
ken. But in whatever direction we pursue our re- 
searches, whether in time or space, we discover 
every where the clear proofs of a creative intelli- 
gence, and of his foresight, wisdom, and power."f 

* Prov. viii. 22-31. f Lyell's Principles, p. 799. 



76 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

Recent salt lakes show deposits of three feet in 
thickness, which have probably been accumulating 
ever since the origin of the present surface, but the 
Cheshire rock-salt beds, deposited in the same man- 
ner, during the triassic era, are 100 feet thick! 

If there were no organic fossils in existence, the 
proof of succession would only be less complete, but 
would not be wanting. Nay, if there were no evi- 
dence of the superposition of mineral masses, the 
veins and faults in rocks would still show the lapse 
of ages in the structure and consolidation of the 
earth. There are some few analogous phenomena 
at work at present in the filling up of fissures with 
crystallized mineral substances, but they are wholly 
inadequate for comparison with the gigantic opera- 
tions which have yielded us our mines. Metallic 
lodes are not of contemporaneous origin with the 
rocks they traverse ; the latter must have become 
consolidated and then rifted, then subjected to the 
action of hot gaseous fluids, again cooled down, 
again rifted and exposed to a second system of vio- 
lent action and deposition, and so for many succes- 
sions until they became duly charged with the mi- 
nerals, or until the latter became aggregated so as to 
become separately visible and obtainable by the in- 
dustry and art of man. Not so attractive are the 
proofs of long periods of time, which are written in 
the metalliferous strata, as those which abound in 
fossiliferous rocks, but their severe records are ca- 
pable prcisely of the same interpretation. Upon 



HISTORY. 77 

a survey of the modes of occurrence of minerals, 
the candid observer must conclude that the earth 
was in existence for ages before the creation of man. 
Nor is this conclusion at variance with any declara- 
tion of Scripture, when the latter is studied with 
the same regard in its interpretation to the scope 
and context as is given to other subjects of revela- 
tion. 

Just as we should learn much of the history of 
England by tracing the fortunes of one of our aris- 
tocratic families backward to the Norman man-at- 
arms who came over with the Conqueror, so we may 
obtain a lively impression of the sequences in the 
geologic past by tracing the fortunes of any family 
which has survived from the earliest times to the 
present, in the palseontological roll. 

In the bays of Polynesian coral reefs there now 
dwells a tiny molluscous creature, protected by a 
thin bivalve shell, named Lingula. It has no dis- 
tinct head, but a notable mouth, whence spring 
two long arms, fringed throughout with delicate 
cilia spirally disposed. The cilia are the agitators 
which sweep currents of sea-water, whence the lit- 
tle creature obtains respiration and nutrition. Its 
intelligence is energized and expressed by a nervous 
collar. All its life long, after infancy, it is moored 
by a short cable, extending from between its shells, 
and made fast to some rock or gigantic sea-weed. 
Thus it lives, like other illustrious obscurities, the 
centre of a small circle, occupying itself in collect- 



78 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

ing, selecting, enjoying, and digesting. Beautiful 
is the little thing as it rides at anchor, in its eme- 
rald grot, shaped like a gondola, exquisitely pellu- 
cid and delicately coloured. The mechanism of its 
valves, the life-organization of the whole, find a hun- 
dred corresponding adaptations in the sea around. 
All things with which it naturally comes into con- 
tact have evidently been constructed for it; nothing 
is transgressive to the law of its being. So it and 
its progenitors have lived in unbroken succession 
from " the time whereof the memory of man runneth 
not to the contrary." Beyond legal memory, 
whose boundary is the departure of brave Coeur-de- 
Lion to the crusades — beyond Herodotus, the fa- 
ther of history — from before the voyage of the good 
ship Argo, it has been living and flourishing, un- 
known to fame. Amidst the turbulence of the 
Flood it lived, and may have attracted the attention 
of the world's gray fathers in their boyhood. But 
it claims a still higher ancestry, for we find it in 
pre-historic times. Separated by a long interval 
from the earliest indications of man, we find it 
among the crag shells of Suffolk. Evidently the 
same kind of creature is it; still a Lingula, though 
as it were but a cousin, with the true family fea- 
tures. Again ascending the stem of its genealogy, 
we find it in the warm regions of eocene life, when 
the oceans and islands were like those of the east- 
ern archipelago at present. The cretaceous period, 
too, shows us our little shell, ranking with the ele- 



HISTORY. 79 

gant forms of the lower green-sand fossils. Up- 
wards still, in the region of the oolites, it takes its 
place with the coral then growing over the new- 
made grave of the gigantic saurians. What became 
of it, in what unknown seas it took its refuge 
whilst the coal forests were alternately flourish- 
ing and decaying, we cannot conjecture; but on 
again entering a zone of purely marine life in the 
mountain limestone, there we find it in its ac- 
customed association. It was even then one of the 
oldest inhabitants, for we discover it in the Devonian 
and Silurian rocks. Most of the well-marked stages 
of Silurian life abound with its remains. The upper 
and lower Ludlow, and the Aymestry limestone, 
have many species. Much more considerable was 
it then than now in relative importance. We have 
dropped off many families, and whole tribes in our 
backward flight; but we must still press on, though 
with greatly diminished retinue, for the little Lin- 
gula ascends to the utmost limit of organic life, 
and is found where any traces of vitality are first 
discovered, in beds which constitute the primeval 
zone, and which by a proper act of heraldry have 
been styled the Lingula flags. There are thirty- 
four species of these little creatures found fossil, 
and only seven recent. It is decidedly an old- 
fashioned form. 

Geology, which would be a dismal labyrinth if it 
exhibited no proofs of order and design, becomes, 
with these kept in view, an illustrated volume of 



80 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

rare interest. By its aid we carry back into untold 
ages the evidences of God, which the naturalist so 
triumphantly gathers from the creation around. 
We cannot deny to the witnesses from the tombs 
the same credit we give to those from the market- 
place. 

Palaeontology and mineralogy both tell us that 
the world has a history not recorded, because not 
professed to be recorded in the Scriptures; and that 
the great actor in this history was unquestionably 
God, "blessed for evermore." He has in the Bible 
given us adequate information to make wise unto 
salvation, but has left for the present untold much 
of the great story of his love ; that we may here- 
after learn it, when the necessities of our present 
condition shall no longer impose restraint on our 
investigations; when all knowledge shall be sancti- 
fied. "When that which is perfect is come, then 
that which is in part shall be done away."* 

We should ever remember the truth expressed 
by the pious author of " Calvis Bibliorum," in 1647 : 
44 The scope of Genesis is to set forth the genera- 
tion of the world ; the corruptions thereof by sin ; 
the restoration thereof by Christ." The student 
who would venture on the ocean of human philoso- 
phy never need discard the compass of the Divine 
Word, though he voyages into regions unknown. 
With the compass aboard he may still navigate in 
security, for he will no where find a place where its 
* 1 Cor. xiii. 10. 



EXPOSITION. 81 

direction will swerve, or its action fail. " Of him, 
and to him, and through him are all things. " But 
he must not expect from his compass more than its 
cardinal points are constructed to indicate, seeing 
that it has been framed by the great Omniscient." 



8 



82 THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



CHAPTER V. 

EXPOSITION. 

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. " — Gen. i. 1. 

Majestically simple and comprehensive is this 
sentence; we feel that nothing can be added to it, 
or taken from it with advantage. Elsewhere, in 
Scripture, the same truth is announced. "He 
stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and 
hangeth the earth upon nothing." " The pillars of 
the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world 
upon them." — Psalms. 

Dr. Harris well expresses the conclusion that 
many wise students have come to respecting the 
scope of this passage. He says: "From a careful 
consideration of the subject, my full conviction is, 
that the verse just quoted was placed by the hand 
of inspiration at the opening of the Bible as a dis- 
tinct and independent sentence; that it was the 
Divine intention to affirm by it, that the material 
universe was primarily originated by God from ele- 
ments not previously existing; and that the origi- 
nating act was quite distinct from the act included 
in the six actual days of the Adamic creation.' 7 * 

i* Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 83. 



EXPOSITION. 83 

Apart from the record, we have the proofs of the 
occurrence here of a vast interval, altogether un- 
noted in the sacred volume ; an interval in which 
all pre-historic geology finds its place. 

"And the earth was without form and void; and dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep." — Gen. i. 2. 

We have seen, in previous chapters, how the re- 
mote past, with all its accumulated stores, is brought 
down to the gate of the present; but not yet is it 
to be introduced and inaugurated. As though to 
exclude evermore the argument which would educe 
the latter from the former by some inevitable pro- 
cess, there is to be an intermediate condition of 
darkness and apparent ruin, which shall render the 
creative power of God the more striking and illus- 
trious. In verse 2 is contained the statement that 
the surface of the earth became in a disordered 
condition. Geology reveals to us that this was not 
a phenomenon preceding all order whatever, but a 
marked interruption in the sequence of physical 
events. Scripture teaches us that it was prepara- 
tory to the present creation. We may reverently 
say, that "it became Him by whom are all things, 
and for whom are all things," that there should be 
an introductory condition of darkness and apparent 
chaos ere the glorious work was fully entered upon. 
"Now, whereas the antecedent darkness did con- 
tinue for some time on the face of the deep, where- 
in the Spirit of God moved upon it, it may be curi- 



84 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

ously inquired how long that space of time was where- 
in the antecedent darkness was and continued before 
the first light was created? But as Divine wisdom 
doth not regard human curiosity, nor attend to sa- 
tisfy it, so I esteem it impertinent."* 

The geologist tells us that this might have taken 
place at any time during the remote past. Its vast 
cycles have witnessed several augmentations of crea- 
tion, and several periods in which the earth may for 
aught that appears, have been, in the expressive lan- 
guage of Wiclif's version, "idil and voyde." But 
it does not tell us what particular set of post-ter- 
tiary phenomena accompanied this event. The 
present creation is immeasurably a greater augmen- 
tation of the past than any one preceding. We 
learn from the word of God, that it was ushered in 
by an appointment which looks like an abandonment 
of the fair earth to darkness and ruin. 

The nature of geological discoveries is such as to 
permit, if not demand, the intervention of epochs 
of absolute change. Though no stratum is found 
continuously all the world over, and we have no 
proof of a universal catastrophe in the records of 
the earth beneath, yet there are appearances which 
may have been occasioned during such an event; 
there is nothing to contradict it, or to render its 
occurrence impracticable. Frequently may the 
geological observer recognise the character of God 
in the aspect noted by the prophet Amos: "Him 

* De Gotte on Genesis, 191. 



EXPOSITION. 85 

that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth 
the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh 
the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters 
of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of 
the earth: The Lord is his name." — Amos v. 8. 

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 
—v. 2. 

Divine energy is now put forth for the commence- 
ment of the present state of things. This differs, 
as a whole, so much from any antecedent condition, 
that it can well be called a new creation. It is not 
a term in any established progress merely, but a 
new work, having a certain orderly correspondence 
with the previous manifestations, but altogether 
surpassing them. There is an approximation from 
the first towards the present, as though all through 
the ages the latter had been the appointed ultima- 
tum of terrestrial physical life in the estimation of 
the Lord and Giver of life, and so all prior deve- 
lopments shadowed and in part shaped out of the 
finished result. The actual is not merely the pos- 
sible, but it is the planned and prefigured. 

Well does good Andrew Fuller write — "The ac- 
count given by Moses relates not to the whole creation, 
but merely to what it concerns us to know. God 
made angels, but nothing is said of them. The moon 
is called one of the greater lights, not as to what it is 
in itself, but what it is to us. The Scriptures are 
written, not to gratify curiosity, but to nourish faith. 

They do not stop to tell you how, nor to answer a 

8* 



86 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

number of questions which might be asked; but to 
tell you so much as is necessary and no more." 

" And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 

"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God 
divided tbe light from the darkness. 

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he 
called Night. And the evening and the morning were 
the first day." — v. 3 — 5. 

Light was now made to appear: first as to the 
darkness out of which it immediately sprung, and 
first with reference to all that of which it was the 
introductory manifestation. The mandate is a fu- 
ture one, and loses none of its sublimity by the re- 
collection that the glorious thing was existing else- 
where, beyond the darkness, and had even reigned 
here in the antecedent ages of elaborate preparation; 
nor does this interpretation weaken the reference 
made by the apostle to this great miracle, in order 
to illustrate the mode of regeneration: — "For God 
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness 
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in Jesus Christ.'' — 
2 Cor. iv. 6. 

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst 
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 

"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters 
which were under the firmament from the waters which 
were above the firmament: and it was so, 

"And God called the firmament Heaven. And the 
evening and the morning were the second day." — v. 6 — 8. 



EXPOSITION. 87 

On the second day, the present atmospheric ar- 
rangements were restored and developed. The 
rain-drop had fallen from the first; differences of 
climate had been produced long before; but out of 
the condition of disorder and dark miracle of verse 
2, now again were evolved, at the fiat of the Al- 
mighty, the play of the great system of exchange, 
whereby the clouds "drop down fatness." 

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be 
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land 
appear: and it was so. 

"And God called the dry land Earth; and the gather- 
ing together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw 
that it was good. 

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the 
herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after 
his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it 
was so. 

"And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding 
seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose 
seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was 
good. 

"And the evening and the morning were the third 
day."— v. 9—13. 

The third day. The present geography of the 
earth's surface made apparent, and then the crea- 
tion and growth of vegetation in soils which had 
been prepared in previous pre-historic epochs. 

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament 
of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let 



88 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for 
years: 

" And let them be for lights in the firmament of the 
heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 

"And God made two great lights; the greater light to 
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he 
made the stars also. 

"And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to 
give light upon the earth. 

"And to rule over the day and over the night, and to 
divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it 
was good. 

"And the evening and the morning were the fourth 
day/'— v. 14—19. 

The unveiling, in the now lucid atmosphere, of 
the sun, moon, and stars, in perpetual connexion of 
forces and influences with the earth. Not the ori- 
ginal establishment, but the first manifestation as 
regards the earth's present surface. 

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly 
the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly 
above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 

"And God created great whales, and every living 
creature that movefh, which the waters brought forth 
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl 
after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 

"And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and mul- 
tiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply 
in the earth. 

"And the evening and the morning were the fifth day." 
v. 20—23. 



EXPOSITION. 89 

We have here narrated the creation, as a whole, 
of the present assemblage of aquatic animals and 
of birds. They were vastly more numerous, diver- 
sified, and useful, than the animals of any previous 
epoch. 

It is owing to the creation of every thing "after 
its kind," both in this and in the previous stages, 
that we can advance with unfaltering footstep into 
the domains of the dead, to pronounce with confi- 
dence concerning the true character of the relics. 
We find around us distinct forms, not derived 
through any transmutation of species from others, 
nor themselves the progenitors in any such fabulous 
descent. The creatures whose origin is recorded 
in these verses, not only exhibit the same master- 
hand as their, predecessors, but the same master- 
mind, inasmuch as both formed consistent parts of 
one harmonious whole. Among the most antique 
things we can gaze upon are the familiar forms of 
the creatures around us. In unvarying similitudes 
have they been preserved and transmitted from the 

first. 

"But changeful and unchanged the while, 
Your first and perfect form ye show; 
The same that won Eve's matron smile 
In the world's opening glow" — Keble. 

"And G-od said, Let the earth bring forth the living 
creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and 
beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, 
and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepetli 



90 THE EAUTH ANI> THE WORD. 

upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was 
good. 

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of 
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, 
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth. 

" So God created man in his own image, in the image 
of God created he him; male and female created he them. 

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and sub- 
due it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that 
moveth upon the earth. 

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb 
bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and 
every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding 
seed; to you it shall be for meat. 

"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl 
of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 
wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for 
meat: and it was so. 

"And God saw every thing that he had made, and be- 
hold, it was very good. And the evening and the morn- 
ing were the sixth day." — v. 24 — 31. 

This informs us of the creation, as a whole, of 
living species of reptiles and animals, and, lastly, of 
man himself. The end crowns the work. Our 
science, in none of its marvellous revelations, can 
bring into comparison any such marvel as man. 
The lord of the lower creation, not by structure, 



EXPOSITION. 91 

but by endowments, as a fossil he would exhibit no 
trace of the immense elevation to which he has been 
promoted by being made " in the image of God."* 
The whole mode of the divine revelation, concern- 
ing the origin of things, can be shown to be con- 
gruous with mental liberty in the pursuit of truth, 
and also with the assumption of a pervading intel- 
ligent belief in God. So the whole mode of the 
Divine manifestations in geology can be shown to 
be congruous with the discipline of man on the 
earth. Looking at the great and difficult truths of 
our science, we point to the Bible, and say — 

u God is his own interpreter, 
And he can make it plain. 77 

He has done so, not by gratifying our curiosity 
in things needless for our spiritual welfare, but by 
giving us materials for certainty in faith and con- 
duct, and leaving much of the objective world as 
the legitimate province of our lawful investigations 
and devout but unaided study. 

In the second chapter of Genesis we have a sum- 
mary of the work of creation as relating to the 
present condition of the earth, with special refe- 
rence to the appointment of a day of rest, and the 
primeval history of mankind. The second verse 
states, the rest of God on the seventh day. A fact 
which is, by Divine appointment, the foundation of 

* For a critical examination of the philology of the question, 
see "Genesis and Geology, By Denis Crofton, B. A.," Kittow's 
Journal, 1850; reprinted in America and here. A most able, 
devout, and exhaustive work. 



92 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

the Sabbath, and, by the same appointment, typi- 
cal of the everlasting rest of the people of God. — 
Heb. iv. 

In a scientific point of view, this passage appears 
to be confirmatory of the conclusion derived from 
natural history, that no new species nor any new 
substance has been created since the period here 
indicated. We have before us, in the universe, a 
definite state of things, whereon to exercise our fa- 
culties and ground our actions. Never can we be 
embarrassed by the addition of unexpected condi- 
tions or affected by the disturbance of existing order. 
"All things continue as they were from the founda- 
tion of the world." 

The globe has been ransacked in the anxious 
search for treasures, but, although "God is able to 
raise up out of these stones children unto Abra- 
ham," yet never has he disturbed the original crea- 
tion, which was crowned when he made man. The 
same power which has been continually exercised 
for its maintenance might, at any moment, have 
spoken into life new races of being. 

There is deep importance in the consideration of 
the finality of the present condition of things. Geo- 
logy proclaims the sufficiency of the material pro- 
vision made for the physical education and main- 
tenance of man; all other natural sciences attest 
the same. The moral sciences utter the like gene- 
ral truth concerning the full adequacy of reason 
with revelation, for the moral well-being of man- 



EXPOSITION. 93 

kind. On every side we are shut up to the present 
and practical. Enough is there in the world for 
the w T ants of man in every sense, as well individually 
as socially. Let us, with humble, penitent, and 
believing hearts, apply ourselves to the study of the 
pregnant truths within our reach, since they are 
sufficient for our well-doing here, and our well-be- 
ing for ever. 

In verses 4, 5, of the second chapter, we are 
again told that God created every plant before it 
grew, and that it grew before rain was, and before 
man was. Ere the sun became apparent in the fir- 
mament, a heavy mist had supplied the vegetation 
with the requisite moisture. 

In Exodus ii. 10, 11, we have a reference to the 
same series of acts constituting the six days' crea- 
tion: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and 
earth, the sea, and all that in them is." 

The true character of the revelation made to us 
concerning these things is admirably expressed by 
the present Archbishop of Canterbury: 

" The account of the creation given by Moses, 
does not profess to furnish any thing like a systema- 
tic or elaborate detail of the mode in which the 
materials of the earth were brought to their actual 
form and situation. The warmest lover of geology 
w T ould scarcely expect to find this in the record, 
the very terms in which such an account could be 
expressed requiring an advanced state of science; 
and the information, when conveyed, being alto- 
9 



94 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

gether unprofitable as to those uses which are the 
proper objects of revelation. To know his connex- 
ion with the Creator and moral Governor of the 
world is necessary to the virtue and happiness of 
man. To investigate the regular laws to which the 
created world conforms, or the process by which it 
was reduced to that obedience, is a delightful exer- 
cise of the reason he possesses; but is totally un- 
connected with those higher interests which a reve- 
lation has in view,"* 

Those who expect to find a full historical account 
of the creation in the Bible, forget that it is given 
to us for no such purpose, but solely in order that 
we may know the true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent. Its historical statements are con- 
fined to the setting forth of so much as is requisite 
to explain the necessity, and vindicate the method, 
and enforce the teaching of the Saviour's work and 
mission. The devout student will, however, rightly 
expect that all its revelations, however slender on 
some topics, should be found to be consistent with 
the discoveries of science. It is the delightful task 
of able scientific men to show that this is so; every 
year adds to the augmenting store of such proofs, 
and thus swells the triumphant song, which may 
well arise from all the domains of human learning, 
"This God is our God for ever and ever!'' 

As geologists, we find nothing in nature to pre- 
vent our taking the account of the creation, literally, 
* Records of the Creation. 



EXPOSITION. 9 



: - 



in the order given; viz. — 1. The creation of all 
things by God. — 2. The bereft condition of the 
earth just previous to the present epoch. — 3. The Di- 
vine energy put forth for its orderly replenishment. 
— 4. The manifestation of light, and of the diurnal 
period. — 5. The clearing of the atmosphere. — 6. 
The establishment of the present general geographi- 
cal boundaries, by the cessation of causes which had 
produced encroachments by the sea on the land. — 
7. The newly emerged lands clothed with vegeta- 
tion. — 8. The appearance of the heavenly bodies 
through the atmosphere, now clearing from excess 
of vapour. — 9. The creation of new species of ma- 
rine life, in addition to such as had survived the 
previous change, and of birds. — 10. The creation 
of land animals, such creations being altogether by 
miracle, and simultaneously at many points on the 
earth's surface. — 11. The creation of man. The 
microcosm of the whole work. 

That there are difficulties connected with the sub- 
ject is undoubted. There is no interpretation in 
which all will concur, nor is it necessary that there 
should be. We can ask only for a reasonable cer- 
tainty ; had unanimity been essential to our welfare, 
doubtless it would have been provided for. There 
are no difficulties whatever connected with the 
great initial truth, which alone concerns us in our 
present condition, — the truth that God is the Crea- 
tor, Preserver, and Governor of all. "God that 
made the world, and all things therein, seeing that 



96 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands; neither is worshipped 
with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, 
seeing he giveth to all, life, and breath, and all 
things." " For in him we live and move and have 
our being." "For we are also his offspring."* 

Our relation to him being thus established, we 
receive with reverence such portions of truth con- 
cerning matters non-essential to our immediate wel- 
fare as he pleases to communicate, waiting, with 
tranquil expectation, for the fuller manifestation of 
that state where we shall see not through a glass 
darkly, but face to face; when those who have 
availed themselves of the truth that, as "there is 
one God, so there is one Mediator between God and 
man," shall, through that blessed intervention attain 
to the fruition of all knowledge and the sum of all 

One thing is clear, namely, that the present con- 
dition of mankind being one of probation, all God's 
manifestations to man have been made on this 
ground. Not only is the Word of God based upon 
the present moral necessities of man, but the works 
of God are so arranged as to subserve the accom- 
plishment of the remedial and restorative processes. 
The trust and confidence, the faith and hope, the 
patience and obedience, into which our minds are 
brought by the operation of the Holy Spirit through 
the Word, find a counterpart in analogous feelings, 
* Acts xvii. 24—28. 



EXPOSITION. 97 

•which a devout consideration of the works of God 
invariably produces. On a large scale, all that we 
can ascertain and know of the unseen, is adapted 
to bring and keep us in humble dependence on our 
heavenly Father, whose glorious character as Cre- 
ator is accompanied by his gracious attributes as 
the Giver. 

If it should be objected to the whole course of 
this exposition, that it avoids the difficulties only by 
evading them, we reply that it is not so. We ac- 
knowledge them, and then suggest an interpretation 
which does no violence to the scope of scripture, 
and is not more at variance with the letter than the 
acknowledged readings of other passages on whose 
meaning all agree. We may add, in the glowing 
words of the " old man eloquent," the Woodwardian 
professor: — " The only way to escape from all diffi- 
culties pressing on the question of cosmogony, has 
been already pointed out. We must consider the 
old strata of the earth as monuments of a date long 
anterior to the existence of man and to the times 
contemplated in the moral records of his creation. 
In this view there is no collision between physical 
and moral truth. The Bible is left to rest on its 
appropriate evidences, and its interpretation is com- 
mitted to the learning and good sense of the critic 
and commentator: while geology is allowed to stand 
on its own basis, and the philosopher to follow the 
investigations of physical truth, wherever they may 
lead him, without any dread of evil consequences, 

9* 



98 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

and with the sure conviction that natural science, 
when pursued with a right spirit, will foster the rea- 
soning powers, and teach us knowledge fitted at 
once to impress the imagination, to bear on the bu- 
siness of life, and to give us exalted views of the 
universal presence and increasing power of God." * 

* Discourse on the Studies of the University. 



EXPOSITION. 99 



CHAPTER VI. 

EXPOSITION CONTINUED. 

The Flood. 

Geologists now tell us that their investigations 
do not disclose any traces of the scriptural deluge. 
Countless are the diluvial effects shown by the old 
gravel beds and conglomerates, but no one of these 
can be singled out as having occurred only 4143 
years ago. They also tell us that such a catastro- 
phe, even if universal, would not leave any trace of 
its occurrence which would record its tale of ruin 
in characters distinguishable from the traces of 
floods, which have swept over many lands within 
historical times. 

The sediments of 150 days, if discovered on the 
present land, would be capable of identification 
only by means of the remains of antediluvian life 
preserved amidst the wreck. None such have yet 
been discovered, and we are consequently in igno- 
rance whether the sin-flood buried the spoils of the 
ungodly under the waves of the present ocean-beds, 
or amidst recesses of the lands yet unexplored. 
But the men of science claim to be heard on ano- 
ther point, namely, whether the Word teaches a 
universal destruction of life on the earth, or only a 



100 THE EARTH AND THE WOED. 

destruction of that which was universal with refer- 
ence to its occupation by mankind in those days. 

No hounds can he assigned to the Almighty 
power of God; if the language of Scripture, inter- 
preted according to rules to be drawn from the 
Word itself, cannot be satisfied without implying an 
amount of miracle sufficient for submergence, death, 
and restoration over the whole earth, of animal and 
vegetable life, within forty weeks, we bow before it 
and acknowledge the miracle. But our knowledge 
of the modes of the Divine government, even in the 
matter of miracles, leads us to expect that the act 
would have reference to the object, and that a re- 
creation more marvellous than the first would not 
be resorted to unnecessarily. Our doubts will be 
much strengthened by reflecting on the present dis- 
tribution of animal and vegetable life, which cannot 
have originated in one place, but must have simul- 
taneously commenced in a thousand places; for 
nothing is better established than the existence, 
throughout all historic times, of distinct life-pro- 
vinces, both botanical and zoological. Add to this 
the difficulty of conceiving how animals could have 
lived, especially those mutually destructive of each 
other, in the early days of such dispersion ; and how 
plants capable of existence only on different soils, 
climates, and aspects, could have been centred in 
one area. 

Nor does geology tend to remove these doubts, 
but, on the contrary, establishes most emphatically 



EXPOSITION. 101 

the fact that in the old world there were life-pro- 
vinces as distinct as in the new; and, further, that 
such life-provinces were approximating to the pre- 
sent on the eve of the actual historic period. 

The depths of air and sea, the slopes of mountain 
ranges, the meadow and the desert, the salt-marsh 
and the upland, the jungle and the prairie, the island 
and the continent, are now diversified by perma- 
nent variety in vegetation originally adapted to its 
present habitat, and we cannot conceive of it other- 
wise without an amount of subjective change greater 
even than the advocates of transmutation demand. 
This is not only the case with the great groups of 
life, but with all the minor assemblages; as any ob- 
servant person who has either travelled or read 
travels will readily grant. Whilst there is a gene- 
ral distribution of life regulated by the local amount 
of light and heat, there is also a special distribution 
regulated by more numerous and recondite adapta- 
tions, showing that God has from the first placed 
life where it can be wisely and opulently sustained. 
There is no single plant or animal diffused equally 
over the whole globe, nor has there been during any 
previous period of the earth's history. Thus in- 
structed, we read the narration which implies the 
universality of the Deluge and ask with some anxi- 
ety, whether this implication is necessary? By no 
means, says the careful Bible reader, for the sacred 
writers in general, and Moses in particular, fre- 
quently employed terms denoting universality to de- 



102 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

scribe local or partial occurrences. Even in the 
chapter under consideration, the phrase " whole 
earth" in the ninth verse cannot mean literally the 
whole, but only that part w T ithin reach of the dove's 
flight; for before that, in verse 5th, we read that 
the tops of the mountains were seen. 

Moses was writing the history of the human race 
as regards sin and salvation, and not a cosmical 
survey of all the successive phenomena of the globe. 

Gen. vi. 11, 12, 13. — These verses speak of a to- 
tal destruction decreed of the sinful race, and a to- 
tal devastation of the whole territory occupied by 
them. 

Gen. vi. 19, 20, 21; vii. 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 
21, 23, 24. — In these passages the expressions used 
are sufficiently comprehensive to include all land 
animals and vegetables; but there are other places 
in scripture where we know that phrases equally for- 
cible are limited by the context, and we accept the 
conclusions of science that the destruction and de- 
vastation were only partial, as not inconsistent with 
a sound, simple faith in the wliole word of God. 

The following passages will serve to show that this 
interpretation is admissible, for in them it is evi- 
dently required. 

All the earth, in Judges vi. 37, means the ground 
round about Gideon's fleece. 

In 1 Kings x. 24, means a great many 
persons, from different countries. 
All the face of the earth, in Gen. xli. 56, means 
Egypt and neighbouring countries. 



EXPOSITION. 103 

All the world, in Luke ii. 1, means the Roman em- 
pire. 
The world, in John xii. 19, means a multitude of 
the people. 

In Acts xix. 27, means the people of 
Greece and its colonies. 
The ivhole world, in Romans i. 8, means all Chris- 
tian churches. 
All nations and all nations of the earth, in Deut. 
xxviii. 37 ; Jeremiah xxix. 18 ; xlv. 8 ; xxxiii. 
9, mean all persons to whom revelation should 
come. 
Every nation under heaven, in Acts ii. 5, means 
persons from the contiguous lands there spe- 
cified. 
All the cattle of Egypt, in Exodus ix. 6, means the 

greater number. — See ver. 19. 
The face of the whole earth, in Exodus x. 15, means 
Egypt. 
"To those who have studied the phraseology of 
Scripture," says Dr. Pye Smith, "there is no rule 
of interpretation more certain than this, that uni- 
versal terms are often used to signify only a very 
large amount in number or quantity."* 

Incidental Allusions to Greological EactSi 
The sacred writers make frequent references to 
the physical phenomena of the earth beneath. Are 

* S (Mature and Geology, 2d edit. p. 295 ; see also Hitch- 
cock's Reltgion and Geology, p. 120. 



104 THE EAKTH AND THE WORD. 

such references in accordance with the facts esta- 
blished by subsequent researches and the observa- 
tion of travellers, or do the latter convict the former 
of ignorance and error? 

The question is the more important, as the ma- 
terials of the earth are not treated conventionally 
in the Scriptures, but naturally. In speaking of 
the sand on the sea-shore, one writer alludes to it 
as a barrier placed by God against the encroach- 
ments of ocean, another as an illustration of the 
countless host of the Philistines, a third as repre- 
sentative of the multitude of God's people. Far 
different and more adapted to universal use is this 
than the employment of one object always to ex- 
press one and the same idea, as in the symbolic pic- 
ture-writing of the Egyptians and Assyrians, and 
as is the usage in much of the literature of the East. 
Freedom of language, if not of thought, is unknown 
where every object is used as a conventional sign, 
always appropriated to. one fixed sentiment. 

We shall find incidental accordances between the 
facts and the record in regard to all things capable 
of such verification. Take, for instance, the refe- 
rences to stone as an illustration. 
y. The Patriarchs and Israelites are frequently di- 
rected to build an altar; the injunction to form it 
of unhewn stones will be found given where rocks 
abound; the permission to make it of earth refers 
to districts in which we now find that stone cannot 
readily be procured. 



EXPOSITION. 105 

The numerous instances given of the setting up 
of commemorative stones in Palestine, by the Israel- 
ites, could not have occurred in the rockless plains 
of the Euphrates. . The geological traveller can 
readily understand the perfect congruity of the 
picture which represents the army of the Philistines 
encamped on one hill, the bands of Israel on the 
opposite slope, and a brawling brook in the valley 
between, to which David descended, and from its 
water-worn pebbles selected five for his sling, smooth- 
ened and sharpened by the stream. 

The mention of slime for mortar, and brick for 
stone, in the Babylonian plains, (Gen. xi. 3,) in 
Egypt, (Exodus i. 14,) and again by the Euphrates 
during the captivity, (Nahum iii. 14 ;) and of bitu- 
men in the vale of Siddim, (Gen. xiv. 10,) equally 
corresponds with the present geological character 
of the regions referred to. 

The frequent occurrence of rocks and broken 
ground in Syria, is the groundwork of much of the 
scenery reflected in the general language of Scrip- 
ture writers, and of many incidents in the history. 
This accurately acco rds with the actual physical 
character of the landfetself. 

The representations of scenery are so minute in 
some cases — for instance, the rocky defile in Gibeah, 
1 Sam. xiv. 4, — that it becomes quite easy for tra- 
vellers to test the fidelity of the writer. 

To this kind of criticism the Bible is more ex- 
posed than any other book, owing to its variety in 
10 



vf 



106 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

time and place; and it need hardly be said that it 
has escaped not only unscathed, but illustrious, from 
the trial. The peninsula of Sinai is no where for- 
mally geographically described in the Bible: but 
from the record of events alleged to have taken 
place there, we infer that it was a mountainous dis- 
trict, full of barren rugged rocks, towering into 
peaks, and cleft by deep dry valleys. Laborde, and 
the numerous tribe of oriental travellers, in de- 
scribing the surface scenery, bring before us evi- 
dence of the peculiarly appropriate terms in which 
Scripture alludes to this region. One of the latest 
travellers thus writes:— " Soon after this, we came 
to an immense plain of hard rocks. The mountains 
which bounded it were truly magnificent: their nu- 
merous summits seemed not so much peaks as 
spikes, or tall spires of rocks. The whole scene is 
one of the most magnificent desolation and unmin- 
gled terror." * 

So, in the limestones, there exist now caverns 
which are the verifications of the cave of Machpe- 
lah, of Adullam, and others, by showing the occur- 
rence of strata in which the requisite phenomena 
are found; whilst the water-supply of the whole 
country at present is an accurate reflection of the 
Scriptural account of wells and streams. The 
language of David and of the prophet Isaiah could 
only have been employed by persons familiar with 
the need of irrigation, and its modes, peculiar to 
*VII. Bonar, Desert of Sinai. 1 



EXPOSITION. 107 

the countries to which they profess to belong. How 
\ividly were the mountains of the Holy Land im- 
pressed upon the minds of the principal writers of 
the Bible! There are about three hundred distinct 
references in Scripture to mountains; a glance at a 
good physical map of the region will show the cor- 
respondence between the statements of the record 
and the facts of the earth's surface in the districts 
referred to. 

Were a student shut up in a cell, without any 
other channel of knowledge than the Word, he 
might construct a physical geography of the Bast, 
which would contain all the leading features of that 
remarkable portion of the globe. The river of 
Egypt, with its fertile plains, the stony desert, the 
.rocky Sinai, the hills of Judea, the rivers and 
lakes, the mountain chains, and the Great Sea, all 
would fall into their proper places on his ideal map. 

So the allusions to " the dust of the earth," will 
carry a fulness of meaning to persons living in a 
land where, during a large portion of the year, the 
whole surface is reduced to dust by the influence of 
heated winds. God's power in creating man out of 
such incoherent matter, and man's humble bodily 
origin and end in this life, are forcibly represented 
by the frequent employment of this illustration, so 
familiar to the inhabitant of the East. 
w In like manner the references to the inundation 
of the Nile,/Amos ix. 5: Job xxviii. H;-f-to earth- 
quakes, Isaiah ii. 19: Job ix. 6, xxxiv. 20; — to 






108 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

mines, metals, precious stones, flints, and other mi- 
neral substances, are all found to be in accordance 
with the actual physical phenomena. 

The references to clay in the Scriptures are fre- 
quent, and accord with its uses and localities at the 
present day. fe-tfee ruins of ancien^ cities we-find 
remains of the stoue or brick-built public edifices, 
but n/O trace whatever of the dwellings of the peo- 
ple, j These were constructed of mudi either in the 
manner common i^i all clay districts, (Icalled "cob" 
in the west of England,) or of imperfectly burnt 
brick, which equally became speedily Resolved into 
its pristine condition by atmospheric influences, or 
gave way before the storm. The vary site of a 
homestead raised of earth becomes, inla short time 
aftp its abandoAment, wholly undistinjguishable as 
vegetation resumes its sway, for mother earth bears 
no/ memorial of Wie lost. This is the image used by 
the patriarch, (Job xiii. 12,) and the apostle, (2 Cor. 
v. 1,) to set forth the true condition of man as com- 
pared with God, or even with angelic beings. The 
first writer uses the illustration in arguing for the 
defective moral state of man, so transitory and tri- 
vial on earth. "Behold, he put no trust in His 
servants; and His angels he charged with folly: 
how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, 
whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed 
fore the moth?" The latter employs it to set 
brth the glorious contrast between the frail and 
orgotten habitation of the spirit here, and its noble 




EXPOSITION. 109 

permanent investiture hereafter. "For we know- 
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were 
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. " Our 
physical condition is inferior ; we ought not to exalt 
ourselves against God ; what poor creatures are we 
at our best estate! Taking his stand by the ruins 
of the clayey tabernacle, he says: Let it be resolved 
into its native elements and perish for ever out of 
sight, with all its grievances and defects! 

Another class of illustration is derived from the 
fictile uses of clay. Pottery is the most universal 
of the arts. It was relatively of more importance 
when metals were scarce. It was then, also, more 
homely in its manufacture, and more constantly as- 
sociated with the habitations of men in small com- 
munities. Stand by the potter under his rude shed ; 
he takes a lump of clay from the mass by his side,, 
kneads it, rudely fashions it into shape, places it 
on the wheel, and in. a few moments by a touch 
moulds it into a vessel of graceful form, or, if dis- 
satisfied, throws it again into the heap, and re- 
moulds, re-fashions, and converts as if actually 
creating. This calling has been pursued by all 
people, in all ages ; it was in the daily view of the 
Jewish people. How expressive, then, become the 
allusions to clay in illustration of the following 
truths : 

1. God's absolute sovereignty as the master 

10* 



110 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

workman. — See Job x. 8, 9; Isaiah xxix. 16; Ro- 
mans ix. 21. 

2. Man's absolute subjectiveness. — Psalm ii. 9; 
Isaiah xlv. 9: xxx. 14; Jeremiah xviii. 6: xix. 11; 
Revelation ii. 27. 

3. Man's appeal to God arising from this rela- 
tionship. — Ps. Ixiv. 8. 

Incidental confirmations of the truth of Scripture 
may be obtained from very many passages of this 
kind, showing its perfect accordance with well- 
known facts. 

The above are offered as indications of the many 
directions in which science and religion are con- 
nected, and in which the former may be used to 
deepen the impressions of the latter. We cannot 
afford to neglect any means of doing this which 
God has placed within our reach. Sadly loth are 
we at all times to learn spiritual lessons, though all 
our true welfare, present and future, depends on 
the acquisition. 

There are endless concealed correspondences be- 
tween the Bible and existing facts, which ever and 
anon are brought to light by the unconscious ex- 
plorer. All objects which minister to this great 
purpose become dignified by the service ; as though 
a noble inscription, once well-nigh effaced, had been 
restored to its place, a perpetual memorial of the 
renown of Him to whom it was at first inscribed. 



GEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS. Ill 



CHAPTERJEH. 

THE GBOrbGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS. 

It has pleased God to connect religion in its 
history with the specialities of particular places and 
people, whilst preparing it for all mankind. Wide 
as the world in its scope, it is, nevertheless, limited 
to a small area in its historic associations. Fitted 
for all time in its provisions, it is yet wedded to a 
contracted span in its own annals. The advantages 
of this arrangement are, that we thereby possess an 
apparatus for first testing and then enforcing its 
truths; for we can eompare the record with the 
realities which are introduced, and we are all rea- 
dily susceptible of impressions connected with a 
local habitation and a name. 

The geology of the countries mentioned in Holy 
Scripture is, as yet, but imperfectly known to us, 
but quite sufficient has been ascertained to test the 
accuracy of the incidental allusions made by the 
writers of the Bible. 

The framew r ork of Syria is composed of two 
mountainous ranges, running in a parallel strike 
with the coast of the Mediterranean, much broken 
by transverse clefts, extended by irregular spurs on 
either side, with detached minor masses, having the 
same north and south bearing. Between the tw r o 



112 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

ridges runs the valley of the Jordan, occupying a 
deep depression, terminating in the Dead Sea. 
y" The body of the country is a mass of Jurassic 
(oolitic) rocks, overlaid unconformably by a spread 
of cretaceous deposits, (chalk and green sand- 
stones,) both much disturbed by outbursts of trap- 
pean matter, (greenstone and basalt,) and scooped 
into valleys along numerous lines of ancient frac- 
ture. The oolite was eroded before the deposition 
of the chalk, and the latter has been washed and 
worn away prior to the deposition of the third sys- 
tem, namely, the eocene tertiary, which is found in 
patches, and abounds along the lands of medium 
height on the shores of the Great Sea. There are 
a few re-consolidated rocks and gravels of a more 
recent period, but the bulk of the whole region is a 
highly contorted, inclined, and broken mass of 
secondary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks. 

The Libanus is an axis of Jurassic rock, with 
some thin beds of oolite coal, surmounted by chalk, 
and flanked towards the coast by the great tertiary 
nummulitic limestone so universal along this parallel 
of the earth. The chalk contains fossils similar to 
that of the South of France. The tertiaries are 
often found isolated after the fashion prevalent in 
other countries. In some places, conglomerates of 
the later Jurassic age occur, containing pebbles and 
fossils of the lower oolites. 
. Towards the sources of the Jordan we find igne- 
ous rocks prevailing, with their usual concomitants 



GEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS, 113 

of metallic minerals, highly coloured landscapes, 
abundant springs, and verdant pastures. Hermon 
(the highest mountain in Palestine,) is formed of 
limestone with bursts of trap. In this range occur 
the strata containing abundant remains of fish and 
vegetable impressions. 

- Galilee exposes similar conditions: an underlying 
oolite rock, an overlying cretaceous, with quartz, 
much broken up by trap. 

The upper portion of the Jordan valley, as far 
south as the lower shores of the sea of Tiberias, are 
much diversified by greenstone, lavas, pumice, and 
other kinds of igneous rock. 

On the east rise the granitic and trappean moun- 
tains of Moab, enclosing a limestone country. In 
the valley itself are tertiary and post-tertiary accu- 
mulations, whilst on the west the tertiary sandstone 
/occupies in force the plateaus of the subjacent lime- 
stone. Mount Tabor is a mass of chalk rock, and 
the cliffs around the sea of Galilee are much inter- 
sected by basalts and lavas. 

The Jordan valley itself shows two terraces far 
above its present waters, both due to its former 
condition, first as an arm of the Red Sea, and then 
as a lake. 

The Mount of Olives, and the other eminences 
, around Jerusalem, are composed of chalk with flints ; 
the older limestones appear in the bottom of the 
deep valleys. This is the substratum of the Holy 
City and its vicinity. Bethlehem is surrounded by 
coarse yellow cretaceous limestone. 



r. 



114 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. ' 

The Dead Sea is bounded on the west principally 
by tall cliffs of stratified limestone, with much rub- 
ble of an ancient date ; towards the south, tertiary, 
marls, and clays prevail, the whole abounding in 
traces of volcanic agencies. The upper portion of 
the long mound at the south of the lake is gypsum, ! 
overlying rock-salt, which is furrowed into knolls 
and pillars. The south-eastern shore is coloured by 
the bright red of the sandstone; on the east are 
heavy limestones and chalk, altered by the igneous 
masses forming the mountains of Moab. The north- 
east angle is formed of basaltic rocks, with volcanic 
slag and pumice. 

The whole Jordan valley was undoubtedly a vale 
in tertiary periods ; but the Dead Sea appears to 
have received the remarkable features which now 
characterize it, subsequently to the deposition of 
the tertiary beds.^* 

Extending our survey eastward from Palestine, 
we may embrace a wide area, extending from Ara- 
rat to the head ^of the Persian Gulf, the general 
features of which are now well known. Many of 
the groups of secondary sedimentary strata familiar 
to us in Western Europe also occur here, upheaved 
together with their overlying tertiary deposits, by 
igneous rocks, in like manner. 

Along the margin of the present river-courses 
are alluvial deposits now in process of formation. 
Next, marine alluvium, following the direction of 
* See Lyncli's Official Report of the United States Expedition. 






GEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS. 115 

the existing great valleys, opening out into the sea, 
and still increasing at the outlet. Colonel Rawlin- 
,son and Mr. Ainsworth represent the marine allu- 
vium as increasing at the head of the Persian Gulf 
jat the rate of a mile in thirty years.* There are 
loccasional freshwater deposits, showing the former 
•existence of small lakes; somewhat of earlier date 
'are extensive formations of gravel, proving the occur- 
rence here, as in the west, of a period of turbulence 
'at the commencement of the post-tertiary epoch. 

The highest tertiary deposits form a system of 
Ired sandstone and marls underlying the valleys of 
the Mesopotamian rivers. This newest red sand- 
stone tertiary is much developed in Asia Minor and 
thence eastward. It has subordinate beds of gyp- 
sum, with occasional naphtha and bitumen springs, 
Underneath this the nummulitic series extends for 
800 miles with a thickness of 3000 feet. This has 
been much disturbed by elevation, which has thrown 
it into domes and waves, constituting much of the 
peculiar scenery of the Turkish -eastern frontier. 
Below this occurs the cretaceous series in the form 
of blue marls, white limestone with flints r and hip- 
purite limestone. A few traces of Palaeozoic rocks 
are brought to the surface : the whole is sustained 
by the granitic axis of the Caucasian chain, and oc- 
casionally metamorphosed by ancient volcanic con- 
tact. 

There are no fossils common to the cretaceous 



c 



Quarterly Journal, 5 ^, x. J. 465.) 



116 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

series and the beds above, though both are marine 
deposits, nor are there any common to the two great 
tertiary divisions, the nummulitic and the red. 

Here then we have, in the region which enclosed 
the cradle of the human race, the same geological 
scale as in^he west. In the very district\here the 
first tribes af the patriarchs dwelt and ektended, 
there had beeii, in ages long antecedent, successive 
oceans and oscillations of the land, constitutihg a 
portion of the great series of preparations ere the 
Genesis of man was appointed. All recorded his- 
tory is connected wit\ the present condition and\ 
configuration of the country, which is demonstrably 
only the last of many platforms of distinct vital and 
physical action. 

i > On turning westward towards the head of the 
Red Sea, we encounter the remarkable peninsula 
of Sinai, formed of red sandstone, borne up and 
rifted by one of the most forcible exhibitions of ig- 
neous rocks to be found in the world. 
^ t The well-knorm narrow plain of Egypt, is a val- 
ley bordered by nummilitic rocks of eocene age, in- 
terspersed with sandstones. As the plain narrows, 
the scenery becomes diversified by frowning precipi- 
ces of granite, basalt, and porphyry, which confine the 
foaming river at the cataracts, and expand into the 
mountains of Nubia. The sands, which stretch away 
towards the peninsula, cover tertiary strata, with 
silicified forests of the same age. 

On approaching the spurs of the Sinaitic range, 
b'HrLlers of r§d granite and metamorphic ro^k give 
indi?!|g|g^^j||^isturbed district beyond. 



The connexion between the structure of the 
country and its history is frequently referred to in 
that delightful book, by the Dean of Canterbury — 
" Sinai and Palestine." Thus he speaks of the 
Sinaitic peninsula: — " The cluster itself consists 
(speaking in general and popular language) of two 
formations — sandstone and granite, or porphyry. 
These two formations, of which it may be said gene- 
rally that the first constitutes the northern, and the 
latter the southern division, play an important part 
both in its outward aspect and in its history. To 
these it owes the depth and variety of colour which 
distinguish it from almost all other mountain scenery ; 
sandstone and granite alike lend the strong red hue 
which, when it extends further eastward, is, accord- 
ing to some interpretations, connected with the 
name of " Edom." It was long ago described by 
Diodorus Siculus as of a bright scarlet hue, and is 
represented in legendary pictures as of a brilliant 
crimson. But viewed even in the soberest light, it 
gives a richness to the whole mountain landscape 
which is wholly unknown in the gray and brown 
suits of our northern hills. Sandstone, however, 
when, as in the Wady Megara and on the cliffs 
which line the shores of the Red Sea, it has become 
liable to the infirmities of age and the depredations 
of water, presents us with those still more extra- 
ordinary hues, of which the full description must be 
11 



too, we trace the connexion of the Sinaitic range 
with the two adjacent countries, and with the his- 
torical purposes to which their materials have been 
turned. The limestone ranges of Tih, in their abut- 
ment on the valley of the Nile, furnished the quar- 
ries of the Pyramids. It was the soft surface of 
these sandstone cliffs which, in the Wady Mokatteb, 
offered ready tablets to the writers of the so-called 
Sinaitic inscriptions and engravings, and to the 
Egyptian sculptors, in the Wady Megara and the 
valley of Sarbut-el-Kedem ; just as the continuation 
of the same formation, far away to the south-west, 
reappears in the consecrated quarries of the gorge 
of Silsilis, whence were hewn the vast materials for 
the temples of Thebes; as the same cliffs, far away 
to the east, lent themselves to the excavations of 
the Edomites and Nabatseans, at Petra, and of an- 
cient Ammon and Moab in the deep defiles of the 
Arnon, so too, the granite mountains on whose hard 
blocks were written the ten commandments of the 
Mosaic Law, and whose wild rents and fantastic 
forms have furnished the basis of so many monastic 
or Bedouin legends, reappear in Egypt, at the first 
cataract, in the vast grotesque rocks that surround 
the island of Philae, and in the vast quarries of 
Syene; and are to be found far off to the east, in 
Arabia Felix, forming the vast granite mass of 



GEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS. 119 

Ohod, the scene of Mahomet's first victory near 
Medina."* 

The frontispiece map shows the character of the 
subsoil of Syria if the green covering of the present 
surface were removed. In the lands once occupied 
by the patriarchs we find, immediately below the 
soil, traces of still earlier occupants, with which no 
man was contemporaneous. 

Similar maps, constructed from actual observation, 
indicate that every portion of the earth to which we 
have obtained access displays the like proofs of a 
vast series of former surfaces of land and water, 
existing in continued succession, accompanied by 
successive developments of creative power, mani- 
fested according to a definite plan, and for a definite 
end. 

If the Bible student finds in his own volume no 
account of these things, it is only that which must 
be said concerning many other branches of human 
inquiry. 

We have a guide competent for the path of our 
human pilgrimage, but not commissioned to tell us 
all that relates to the countries outside. 

Doubtless they are unexpected conclusions to 
which our science leads us. That all the monuments 
of human history relate only to the last of the hun- 
dred changes to which this globe has been subjected, 
that man upon the earth is comparatively recent, 
that long ere his advent God was here in the pleni- 
* Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 10, 11. 



120 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

tude of power and wisdom, that death has been from 
the first an appointment connected with earthly life, 
and that its extension to man was the application, 
as penalty, of an ordinance previously obeyed by 
all lower life; these are some of the deductions from 
which the inscribed stones will not allow us to escape. 

We may well be satisfied with that which is written 
in both records. In attempting to strain after re- 
conciliations, either in physics or metaphysics, where 
the connexion of truth is not revealed to us, we 
may wear our faculties and waste our time in useless 
endeavour after the unknowable. We have to gird 
ourselves for a different struggle, the encounter with 
the realities of our being, its duties and delights, 
its responsibilities and destiny. 

But let us not despise the refreshments by the 
way which an intelligent study of God's works af- 
fords. The panorama around us offers a thousand 
delightful views, and whilst we have to pass on as 
warriors girt for the battle of life, and as pilgrims 
who "seek a country,'' still it is not forbidden to 
us to gather the scallop-shell and pluck the flower 
which our benevolent Maker has strewn about our 
path. 

We strengthen our own convictions, and corro- 
borate the testimony of God's Word as to the fact 
of our high destiny, w T hen we thus speculate on the 
far-off place of the creation, and the far-off times of 
its history. Calculated for a longer duration and 
wider range than anything we see around us, we 



GEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE LANDS. 121 

ought to inquire of the only oracle, "Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do? " And this inquiry is the 
more urgent, seeing that although we< have such 
high connexions, yet we are "of the earth, earthy." 
Without a higher work of obedience wrought for us, 
and of holiness wrought in us, we shall never rise 
to the pure enjoyments of a regenerated and en- 
nobled nature. 

The grandeur of the provisions of creation dis- 
played in the earth may prepare us for the loftier 
grandeur of the provisions for man's recovery and 
restoration to the Divine favour revealed to us in 
the word. The obscurities of both are necessities 
of the case as it is, and surely need not deter our 
practical resort either to the one or the other. 

"One part, one little part, we dimly scan, 

Through the dark medium of life's feverish dream, 
Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan, 

If but that little part incongruous seem. 
Nor is that part perhaps what mortals deem: 

Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise. 
Oh, then, renounce that impious self-esteem, 

That aims to trace the secrets of the skies ; 

For thou art but of dust, — be humble and be wise." 

Beattie's Minstrel. 



11* 



122 THE EARTH AND THE WORD, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The History of the Inquiry. 

It would be difficult to determine whether the 
world has been the wiser or not for all the com- 
mentaries that have ever been written. The au- 
thority of great names has probably given currency 
to more of error than of truth. Let it be hoped 
that a more rational method now prevails, and will 
issue in the future advancement of science. The 
commentators on Scripture are, however, not charge- 
able with so much blame in regard to geological 
science as the philosophers who have made the for- 
mation of the earth the subject of disquisition, who 
have surpassed each other in the flights of ima- 
gination, which have been called theories of the 
earth. 

It would be out of place to enumerate here the 
views of heathen writers, so universally expressed 
in some form or other on this subject. Nor can we 
allude at length to the scholastic doctors, or to more 
than a few of the more modern authors on the same 
fertile topic; for, ever since the revival of learning 
in Europe, the press has never been long without 
sending forth some new extravagance, doing vio- 
lence either to Scripture or to science, and most 



of ignotum pro magnifico^ has been embodied in 
the traditions and literature of all nations in regard 
to the origin of things. 

So eminently unpractical a question was exactly 
the staple required by the scholastic philosophy of 
the Middle Ages. It afforded positive luxury to 
the keen disputants of the cloister, who rejoiced in 
a region belonging neither to heaven nor to earth. 
Amongst them some, as St. Augustine and St. An- 
selm, embodied a considerable amount of truth in 
their conclusions; but in general the result was 
nothing which could by any possibility be added 
to the sum of human knowledge— -nothing which 
lessened the pre-existing and surrounding igno- 
rance. The study of fossil remains being the true 
key to the physical history, it was not to be won- 
dered at that the latter was altogether neglected, 

whilst the true nature of the former was denied, 
plainest -Tt^»xzT«r««roii r cu ^^x™^ 5 ^-w^x-g- 

from one post to another ere it can be finally driven 
away. Especially is it dangerous when a supposed 
theological necessity is invoked for its support, for 
it then becomes injurious to a more precious inte- 
rest, and obstructive to the reception of true reli- 
gion. 
* * See Omphalos, 1857. 



, _ ,«„- & * ™»~-~ — TrrrTTT^ ~~ TIT. 
itWt a tfieorv of the world, xiie principle 



The last named person was a pious physician, 
at Chemnitz, who devoted himself to mineralogy, 
and was much in advance of his age. In his work, 
published in 1549, he maintains the mineral cha- 
racter of the marks of organic fossils, and, with 
equal gravity, the existence of demons peculiar to 
the mines : the latter he classes in two divisions, 
the Bergenteufels, and Bergeneulen. His opinion 
as to the nature of fossils was combated occasion- 
ally by the more practical minds of the age, amongst 
others, by Palissy, the potter, in 1580; but it sub- 
sisted till 1752, when Mr. Bertrand, a Swiss clergy- 
man, made a last effort in its favour, contending that 
they were the unfinished forms of real creatures, 
and the connecting link between organized and un- 
organized matter. It has again been raised from 
well-merited oblivion, by Mr. Gosse.* Such is 
. _ ^i^io qc "Uv,™ ±~ ^i u( j e the force of the 
±he prevalent opinion among luv-^iMwr^fc^ 
upwards of two centuries after the revival of let- 
ters was, that organic remains were mere mineral 
concretions. Hypotheses were invented purport- 
ing to account for tfreir production in .-met! 
quite worthy of the school of subtle philosophy 
whence they issued. 

This was maintained, not by obscure monks, but 
by really accomplished persons, the lights of natu- 
ral hist01 7 in their day, such as Fallopio, Mercatl 
and Ohvi, in Italy, Plot and Lister, in England, 
Agncola, in Germany. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 125 

The Italian geologists, as we learn from Sir 
Chariot Ljell * w <^e the most enlightened natural- 
ists of i^iir age. 

The excavations made for repairing the city of 
Verona, in 1517, brought to light a number of 
fossil remains, the appearance of which exercised 
the wits of that time ; and, amongst others, Fraf- 
cqtoro boldly expounded their true meaning and 
relations. He declared that they had not origi- 
nated in any such "plastic force" as was pretended, 
nor could they have been the results of the waters 
of the deluge^ 

After having been thus rescued from the mineral 
kingdom, they were, however, universally attri- 
buted to the deluge. Fabio Cplgnna, in 1600, and 
the whole of the Italian writers of this period, con- 
sidered that all petrifactions were the remains of the 
Noachian deluge. This was the orthodox opinion. 

In 1669, 8teno, a Dane, attached to the Court 
of Tuscany, expounded the true theory of organic 
fossils; he laboured to harmonize his views with 
Scripture, by selecting strata, which appeared to 
him to be unfossiliferous, and treating them as 
having been created before the existence of ani- 
mals and plants. Ste^o suggested thai. Moses, 
when speaking of the Idfjiest mountains having 
been severed by the deluge, meant merely the 
loftiest of the hills then existing, which may not 

* Principles, chap. i. whence these notices of Italian opinions 
;,are derived. 



-- 



1 



126 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

have been very higli. The diluvial wat§*£ he sup- 
posed may have issued from the in&frior of the 
earth, pito which they had retired when in the be- 
ginning the land was separate^ from the sea. 

In 1676, Quirini contended that the diluvial wa- 
ters could not have effected all the operations attri- 
buted to them, and maintained that the universality 
of the Mosaic deluge was not to be insisted on. 

In 1688, Robert Hook, the learned mathema- 
tician, in his posthumous treatise on earthquakes, 
assigns to organic remains their true character, 
and supposes that some species may have been 
lost r whidrwas consistent, in his opinion, with the 
doctrine of~Scxipture,-that the world is degenerating . 
In his diluvial theory he attempts to crowd into the 
time between the creation and the deluge, and into 
the latter, all the visible phenomena of upheaval or 
dislocation. 

A far different work was published in 1670 — 
De Gotte's, " The Divine history of the Genesis 
of the World," a book which we have not seen 
quoted in the history of the inquiry. It adopts 
an independent method of investigation, and is 
distinguished by a free spirit of inquiry, combined 
with supreme reverence for the Word of God,, and 
great felicity in statement and illustration. The 
scope of his work may\be judged of by the follow- 
ing extract from the introduction: "Wherefore, 
now, Christian world ! ^vho art a collection nok 
only of men, but of Christians, judge thou accord- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 127 

ing to both capacities,* whether Scripture be not 
the truest comment that ever was made upon nature ; 
and that thou mayest rightly discern between, set 
the short system of divine Genesis by all or any 
other whatsoever. And, now, after so many Chris- 
tian agefe, let it be once determined whether this 
be a true history of the creation of not; and if it 
be (as most undoubtedly it is,) let us no longer be 
bereaved of so great a treasure, which has hitherto, 
I know not how, been not only hid underground, 
but trampled on by the feet of men." 

Nor were the opinions of the pious and accom- 
plished Ray, the father of modern and scientific 
natural history, more rational than those of his 
compeers. Much did he write and labour in the 
construction of an elaborate theory; but though 
he received with the reverence of a little child the 
dictates of Scripture concerning the mightier mat- 
ters of his salvation and obedience, yet, in matters 
not immediately connected with these, he must 
needs philosophize, to accommodate the imperfect 
knowledge of that day with the apparent require- 
ments of theology. / 

In 1690 Dr. Thomas . Burnet, Master of the i > 
Charter House^ published his " Sacred Theory of 
the Earth,' '' an eloquent, marvellous work, still 
readable, and frequently to be found on our book- 
stalls. His grand aim was to construct a com- 
plete theory for past, present, and future. He 
describes the^earth at the beginning, as a fluid mass 



» 



128 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

composed of all kinds of materials. The heaviest 
descended to the bottom and formed a solid kernel, 
around which the waters, and afterwards the at- 
mosphere, united, but between the water and at- 
mosphere there was formed an oily stratum, which 
received, little by little, all the earthy constituents 
with which the air was still charged. On this con- 
solidated bed, marshy, thin, uniform, level, without 
mountains, without valleys, without either seas or 
rivers, lived the antediluvian generations. At this 
epoch the marshy crust, dried up by the heat of the 
sun, split, and fell down in the great abyss of waters. 
From thence came the universal deluge, the dis- 
arrangement of the axis of the globe, and the 
changing of climates. The earth thus drowned, 
had still some cavities into which the waters en- 
tered, little by little, and so returned to their sub- 
terranean reservoir. Thus the ocean is a part of 
the great abyss, the isles are the fragments, the 
continents are the great residuary masses of the | 
old world. To the confusion brought about by the 
breaking up of the waters, are owing the mountains 
and other undulations that we now see. This is a 
specimen of a large class of writings, which passed 
for the effusions of learning and piety, in the Au- 
gustan age of English literature. 

In 1696, Whiston, the great astronomer, pub- 
lished his new theory of the earth. Accustomed to 
lack at-the-heayens astronomically, the learned and 
r&ah -philosopher called in the aid of a comet: he 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 129 

conceived of the earth as still having in its midst 
a solid and burning kernel, retaining the heat 
which it received from the sun when it was only 
the nucleus of the comet, and continually spread- 
ing it towards its circumference. This nucleus 
is itself surrounded by a great abyss, which is 
composed of two rings, of which the lower is a 
heavy fluid, and the upper water; it is this layer 
of water which constitutes the foundation of our 
earth. The deluge was occasioned by another 
comet striking the earth, and was the parent of 
all the disturbances now manifest in its crust. 
Whiston interpreted the first verse of Genesis i. 
as narrating the creation of an uninhabited comet, 
in the atmosphere of which the materials \ formed 
a chao^, enveloped in thick darkness. From the 
first day, when the atmosphere of the comet was 
disembarrassed of all its solid and earthy \parts, 
it ceased to resist the rays of the sun, and thus, 
all at / once was produced light. The inhabitants 
of the world became corrupt, and the mist from 
the tail of a comet produced the judgment of .the 
deluge. 
j About 1680 the great Leibnitz wrote of the earth 
as an extinct sun vitrified. According to him, its 
greater portion was the subject of & violent fire, 
at the time when Moses tells us that the light was 
separated from the darkness. The fusion of the 
globe produced a vitrified crust ; when the crust was 
cold, the humid parts, which had risen in vapour, 
12 



130 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

fell again, and formed the ocean. The seas then 
deposited calcareous rocks. It at first enveloped 
all the surface of the globe and surmounted the 
higher parts which at present form the continents 
and isles. Thus the shells and other rubbish of 
marine animals that one finds everywhere, prove 
that the sea has covered all the land; and the great 
quantity of fixed salts, of sand and other matters, 
fused and calcined in the earth, testify to the uni- 
versal fire, and that it preceded the existence of sea. 

In 1695, Br. Woodtvard, {the founder of the 
professorship at Cambridge, which has given so 
distinguished a light to geology as the present 
holder of the chair, Professor Sedgwick,) in his 
M Discourse on the Natural History of the Earth,* 9 
most ably vindicates the proper nature of organic 
remains, and disposes of the views of those who 
attribute them to casual inundations, or to the wash 
of the sea when the land was first made; but he is 
equally unsuccessful in the formation of an hypo- 
thesis as his predecessors. 

He holds that at the deluge the solid strata of 
the earth were dissolved in the water; the remains 
of animals sank down and became imbedded accord- 
ing to their relative gravity. And yet our philoso- 
pher was not only an able man, but a good observer 
and collector. 

In Italy a more correct form of philosophizing 
-was springing up. 

Vallisneri, finding by his own careful observa- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 131 

tions that the facts were not in accordance with 
the theories then in vogue, which were affirmed to 
be founded in the interpretation of Scripture, at- 
tacked the interpreters, and demonstrated that 
they were in error. He wisely contented himself 
with recording his own observations, and would not 
attempt the construction of a theory. 

In 1740, Moro, on the other hand, with much 
that is valuable in his onslaught upon other cosmo- 
gonists, fell into the error of becoming one of their 
number. His theory, however, is much more con- 
sistent as well as reverential to the truth, than that 
of any of his predecessors. 

In 1749, Buff on published, like his fellow phi- 
losophers, a theory of the earth, which is now found 
in the first part of his collected works. It is a free 
and easy way of world-making with the aid of a 
sun, a comet, volcanic and aqueous forces at plea- 
sure. The Sorbonne required him to recant so 
much of his work as expressed the sentiment that 
the waters of the sea had produced the land, and 
then left it dry, and that the land was again, by 
wear and tear, gradually merging into the sea. 
The recantation is published with his works. These 
gorgeous dreams cost their author forty years' 
thought, and enjoyed uncommon reputation. Even 
now, their decision of tone and eloquence of state- 
ment command an interest. 

This is the last of the formal splendid fictions 
which so long occupied the thoughts of philoso- 
pher and^ttgurped the name of geology. 



132 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

jr/ In 1756, Lehmann the German mineralogist, 
confined the action of the flood to the production 
of a few only of the rocks, assigned the unfossili- 
ferous strata to the original creation, and the con- 
glomerates to an intermediate revolution. 

In 1760, Michell, who held for eight years the 
Woodwardian professorship at Cambridge, showed 
himself as the true predecessor of modern geology. 
Neglecting cosmogony altogether, and applying 
himself to the description of the strata as they 
appeared under his own observation, he discovered 
the true sequence of the beds, and indicated a 
direction in which the geologist might pursue his 
labours without infringing on theology. 

After Michell, the visions of the cosmogonists 
were again reproduced by various English writers. 
Sound geology, however, began to take precedence 
of world-making; the actual wonders of the sub- 
terranean world were preferred to the gay crea- 
tions of the world-makers. Hutton, William Smith, 
and a host of followers, comprising Cuvier and 
Brogniart, kept the republic of letters well em- 
ployed in acquiring the grammar of the new sci- 
ence, which was being created by physical researches 
into the strata and their contents. Henceforward, 
cosmogony assumes a second-rate position. 
. . De Lue, in 1799, wrote of the chronology of 

Moses, as only commencing with the creation of 
man ; and of the days of creation as being not 
natural days, but indefinite periods. A long line 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 133 

of illustrious men, many of whom are now living, 
diverted attention from the vain attempts of the 
early philosophers, and occupied themselves ex- 
clusively with descriptive geology. Some of them, 
however, (and more not of them,) have essayed to 
break a lance in tire old tourney. A classifica- 
tion of opinions — taking only the views of the 
leading men — will serve to show, in a general way, 
what has been said and done for the last fifty years 
in this department of knowledge. .» 

The following are the principal hypotheses: — 

1. That the days of creation are indefinite periods, 
during which all the phenomena of geology occurred. 
That the deluge is now marked by the drift and 
gravel remains of the post-tertiary age. Cuvier, 
Parkinson, Jameson, and others/** 

2. That the first sentence of Genesis has no 
connexion with the subsequent verses. The phe- 
nomena of geology have place between the first 
and second verse. The chaos was universal* and 
ushered in the present creation/ Chalmers, 1804. 
See also u The Earth's Antiquity in harmony with 
the Mosaic Account of Creation, by James Crray, 
31. Ar 1849. J 

3. That the earth that now is, was the bed of 
the ante-diluvian sea. That all the phenomena, 

* Tb^last exposition of this theory is in the "Course of 
Creation" of Dr. Anderson ; Longman, 1850. A work full of 
eloquent description and admirable reasoning. 

f The present writer did not see this excellent work until 
after the foregoing chapters were in the press. 

12* 



134 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

now visible, resulted from operations in the interval 
between the creation and the end of the deluge. 
That, save this, the rocks were created as they now 
exist* -r- Granville Penn, Young. 

4. That we cannot rely on an interpretation of 
the Hebrew records, and therefore we may set 
them aside when apparently at variance with geo- 
logical f&ctsi—Babbage. 

5. That the records are poetical representations 
and not historical.^— Byden Powell. 

6. That the first verse is a detached account of 
the original creation. The chaos, the six days' cre- 
ation, and the flood, were loeal phenomena, and 
refer to what was transacted in the province occu- 
pied by man only. t— Dr. Pye Smith. 

7. That the "days were great natural periods. 
The Palaeozoic system, pre-eminently that of plants, 
is the work of the third day; the secondary, pre- 
eminently the epoch of sea monsters and creeping 
things, is the work of the fifth day; and the ter- 
tiary, the time of mammalian creatures, is the work 
of the sixth d^j.-^ITugh Miller. 

< > ■ ' 8. That the Mosaic narrative 13 a revelation 
made in visions to the mind of the prophet, the 
days are therefore spoken of, not in connexion with 
the events, but the duration of the vision. The 
events occurred in extremely lengthened periods. 
Tie deluge was partial r -^1854. 'Mosaic Record 
in harmony tvith Geological. 1854/ Genesis of 
the Earth and Man. 



y 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 135 

9. That all creation took place consecutively, 
according to the literal reading of Genesis i. All 
things, fossil and recent, form part of one whole 
system of life, and were created at once on the 
successive days of creation. That the fossil spe- 
cies have become gradually extinct, and their re- 
mains buried by disturbances occurring from the 
firsts— L'Abbe Sorignet, 1854., 

10. P. &. Gosse, Wm. , The theory of this inte- 
resting writer, is a reproduction of Granville Penn, 
with a dash of the old arbitrary anti-geologic notion 
of the creation of the rocks, with fossils complete 
as they are. He affirms a principle which he calls 
the law of "Procbronism," in virtue of which, the 
strata of the surface of the earth, with their fossil 
floras and faunas, may possibly belong to a " pro- 
chronic' ' (i. e. to an unreal and symbolical or typi- 
cal) development of the mighty plan of the life 
history of the world. Mr; Gosse has thus added 
another name of note to the illustrious list of sys- 
tem mongers, who have been seduced from the 
simple path of observation into the labyrinth of 
world-making, by an assumed theological necessity, 
which has no existence. The construction by good 
men of such violent hypotheses, implies an urgent 
conviction on their parts of the magnitude of the 
difficulty to be overcome. Had they applied their 
minds to the humbler task of learning the facts of 
the science with which they deal so summarily, the 
difficulties would have diminished or quite vanished, 



TlV- ' ' 



136 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

and their learned labours would have taken a more 
useful direction. Suchattempts are clumsy votive 
offerings, disfiguring the shrine they are intended 
to adorn. 

The preceding account, though it is only a very 
general view of the principal hypotheses on this 
subject, yet sufficiently shows how the minds of 
the framers have felt the power of the Sacred 
Writings. They have done homage, all uncon- 
sciously in many instances, to Divine truth, by ac- 
knowledging the necessity of accordance with it, 
however widely they have diverged from its plain 
teaching. It is a notable instance of the command- 
ing power of the Scriptures, that thus, through 
ages of ignorance and periods of enlightenment, 
they should still have been the pole-star, guiding 
all voyagers in their pathless track towards the un- 
known. 

The temper of the disputants on both sides has 
always been commendable; in this, however, as in 
other intellectual battles, the usages of war are 
more charitable now than in days of yore. 

The sound advice of Dr. Wiseman is acted on to 
some extent. Hesays: — 

"So long, indeed, as phenomena are simply re- 
corded, and only the natural and obvious causes 
drawn from them, there can be no fear that the 
results of the study may prove hostile to religion. 
How T much wiser was the counsel of Gamaliel, and 
how applicable to those who impugned these par- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 137 

suits. . . . Kefrain from these men and let them 
alone ; for if the work be of men, it will fall to no- 
thing; but if of God, ye are not able to destroy 
it. . . . If the representations they have given of 
nature are the fictions of men, they cannot stand 
against the progress of science; if they truly pic- 
ture the work of God, they must be easily recon- 
cilable with his revealed manifestations."* 

11. We have reserved until last, as being on the 
whole the most comprehensive and satisfactory, the 
conclusions of Mr. Crofton, which have now for 
some years been before the world, and have not 
been refuted by any philologer. He affirms that, 
apart from geological considerations, and judging 
from analogy with Scripture alone, the interpreta- 
tion of the Sacred Volume renders the following 
ten propositions credible. 

1. That the absolute age of our earth is not de- 
fined in the Sacred Volume. 

2. That there may have been a long inter val in 



uration between the creation of " the heaven and 
the earth" mentioned in the first verse of the first 
chapter of Genesis, and the continuation of the 
earth's history in the second verse. 

3. That the term "the earth" does not apply 
necessarily, in every instance, to the whole of our 
planet, but sometimes only to a part of it. 

4. That the state of the earth, described in the 
second verse as "without form and void," does not 

* Lectures, p. 188. 



ii 



138 THE EARTH AND THE WORD. 

necessarily mean matter never reduced to form 
and order, but may signify matter reduced to dis- 
order, after previous organization and arrange- 
ment. 

5. That the "darkness" "upon the face of the 
deep," also mentioned in the second verse, is not 
negative of the previous existence of light, but 
may have been only a temporary one. 

6. That the commencement of the account of the 
first six days' creation, dates from the beginning of 
the third verse, "And God said, Let there be light." 

7. That the act of "the first day" does not ne- 
cessarily signify the creation of light, but may have 
been only the calling it into operation upon the 
scene of "darkness " described in the second verse. 

(8.>That the calling "the light Day" and "the 
darkness Night," with the declaration that "the 
evening and the morning were the first day," does 
not necessarily imply that this was the first day, 
absolutely speaking. 

7 9; That the work of "the second day," men- 
tioned in the sixth, seventh, and eighth verses, may 
have been only an operation performed upon the 
atmosphere of our earth. 
A s I 10.) That the work of "the fourth day," de- 
^ scribed from the fourteenth to the eighteenth 
verses, does not necessarily imply that the sun, 
moon, and stars, were then first created or formed, 
for the first time, from pre-existent matter; but 
may only have been that they were then, for the 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



139 



first time, in the detail of the history of the present 
earth, made visible to it, and ordained to their 
offices with respect to the coming human creation.* 
Th^e stand-point of most of the theorists is the 
absolute truth of the Holy Scripture, in the most 
literal sense, as if the record to be interpreted were 
a lecture on natural history. Another large party 
has made the absolute truth of geology their stand- 
point; each has magnified the nearest objects in his 
menltal landscape. j We have assumed the absolute 
truth, both of the Word of God, and of the fair de- 
ductions from His forks. Where we are able to see 
the harmony, we rejoice in its manifestation; where 
we fail as yet to discern it, or to expound it to the 
satisfaction of others, we enjoin patience and confi- 
dence, until thesfe shadows shall flee awafjr, as so 
mapy others hav$ done before the advance 0f sound 
knowledge. And should it be that, after ill these 
efforts, somewhat of obscurity still hangs (bver the 
subject, we will* believe in the goodness 4nd wis- 
dom of God notwithstanding^ endeavouring, to walk 
humbly, and therefore surely, before him. ' 

*i Genesis arte! Geology, by-Desk Oefton, B. -A, 
\ ' ' ' *^2 - 




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